New Beginnings
by Zalerath
Summary: Tsukune and his friends have been separated after Yokai Graduation, each going to do various things. He has taken over as Headmaster of Yokai academy, Ruby is still his assistant; he is haunted by dreams of what he deems to be his failures and he and his friends will meet again to embark on a new journey for race coexistence. *NOTE CONTAINS MANGA SPOILERS*
1. Chapter 1

New Beginnings

_Rating: this fanfiction will range from M to MA for containing violence and possible "lemons", also note I do not own Rosario + Vampire, anime OR manga, NOR any of its characters, I also DO NOT make any profit from this fanfiction, it is solely for the enjoyment of the public._

_Note: THIS FANFICTION WILL START OFF WITH A MANGA SPOILER, IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE MANGA AND DO NOT WANT IT TO BE SPOILED, READ IT BEFORE READING THIS PLEASE._

_Backstory Character Info; Tsukune; 24, Moka; 23; Kurumu; 25, Mizore; 25, Ruby; 28, Yukari; 19, Kokoa; 21_

_Chapter One: Coping with Guilt_

- / -

Seven years.

Seven years it had been since the group of Tsukune Aono, Moka Akashiya, Kurumu Kurono, Mizore Shirayuki, and Yukari Sendou had graduated from Yokai Academy; however, since Tsukune had been left the academy by Mikogami, he stayed a Yokai Academy as the new headmaster, as had Ruby Toujou, now serving with pleasure as Tsukune's assistant, the rest of the group, he had no idea where they had gone after graduation; Moka said she was going back home to Castle Shuzen to advance her studies there, since she would have an immense library of several different subjects there that the human world didn't have, Kurumu had went back to her mother to, as she says, "Hatch up a plan," and when he inquired about the plan, "to make you mine when I see you again, of course!" She had replied cheerily, with a playful _flick _to his forehead, he should have expected as much, Yukari had gone off to a university in the human world in the fields of chemistry, nursing, and botany, most likely to form new, insane magical creations; however, unlike the rest, Kokoa had gone to the human world and began a career as a martial arts fighter and teacher, the world over was stunned by how untouchable he was, but ignorance was in a way a bliss, he supposed… Mizore, he wasn't entirely sure of, when asked what she was going to do next, she had simply shrugged and thought for a moment before saying, "I don't know, really, I guess I'll come up with something as I go,"… Which he could have sworn turned in to her stalking him as usual, for he was almost certain he would see brief flashes of purple almost every time he turned his head.

And as for himself? Besides staying at Yokai Academy, he had began studies in barriers and seals, with Ruby's aid of course, and had over the past few years been attempting to create a seal like no other.

A seal that he could use to not limit his vampiric powers, but to combine them with the abilities of other yokai, so that he could serve as a very beacon of the peace and coexistence between races he strived for, to give that coexistence form.

As we embark on this new journey, we will see new beginnings, new hardships, new victories, and new losses, and we will find out together what will happen in the group's travels and endeavors as they do.

- / -

"Moka! No!"

"Tsukune…. I…"

As he looked down at the rapidly fading life form in his arms, tears welled up in his eyes, and try as he might, he could not keep them from falling.

In his arms, was Moka Akashiya, her seal broken and cracked most likely beyond repair, with tendrils impaling her body from several points, the life quickly fading from her eyes.

"Moka, please… please don't die!" He cried desperately, his voice strained in a vain attempt to prevent heart-wrenching sobs from infiltrating and distorting what he was trying to say, "I've… we've all… lost you too many times, we can't lose you again! Especially not so soon after getting you back! Please… Please stay…"

"Tsukune," She whispered softly, and, mustering what strength she could, she raised a hand to his cheek and looked into the warm brown eyes she loved so much, and winced, not at her own pain, but at the pain she saw in his eyes, and tears began falling down her cheeks as well, "The Rosary is broken… That was what I was created to prevent from happening… With it gone… I can't… Stay…" She whispered sadly.

"We can have Fuhai try to fix it again!" He said, in a vain hope that she could be saved somehow.

"No… This time no one can fix it…. Tsukune… This is the end for me… But, before I go… I need to… Tell you…"

"What is it, Moka-san?" He asked, hoping still for favorable words in this horrible situation.

"… Ever since I've met you, I've loved you," She started, and his eyes widened slightly in surprise at what she said, "and even if I was created as a fake personality," she continued, "all of the feelings and memories I've gained and learned during my time here with you are real as far as I'm concerned, you were my first friend, and my first and last love," the strength in her voice was rapidly fading by this time, and she knew she was almost out of time, "I've cherished all my time with you and the others more than you will ever know, than you so, so much… I love you, Tsukune." She finished

And with that, the tears falling from his eyes increased twofold, and he held her as close to him as he possibly could, his shoulders trembling violently from his sobs as well as the pain in his heart that hurt worse and felt more physical than any pain he had ever felt, "I love you too, Moka-san, I always have, and I always will," he managed to say between sighs and sobs, each more agony-filled than the next, "you've meant so much to me, I wish I had said this all sooner… Maybe we could have… Been together… I don't know, and we'll never know, all I know is I don't care if you were a fake personality, you're real to me, and my love for you is real, Moka-san." He said, and gazing in to her beautiful, emerald green eyes, he saw a warmth and happiness like he had never seen in her before, and as she closed her eyes, she lifted her head up as much as she could, and somehow knowing what she wanted, he lowered his own face down to meet hers in a soft kiss, the first kiss they had shared, and sadly their last, and finally, after they both pulled away when they both knew intuitively it was time, she said, "As far as I'm concerned… I'm yours…. Up until the last second…" And with that, her hand slowly slid down his cheek, she smiled at him, then closed her eyes slowly as her face went to a more peaceful, sleep-like expression, and her hand fell from his face to lay limp by her side, and she was gone. The beautiful, kind, optimistic personality of Moka Akashiya had taken her leave.

With a scream that pierced the heavens, Tsukune tried in a hopeless fight to dispel all of the grief, all of the agony, and all of the anger running through him, holding her lifeless form to him, all he could do was weep.

- /-

"NO!" Tsukune screamed, waking with a start from where he had fallen asleep at his desk, panting heavily and drenched with sweat, looking around frantically to figure out where he was before coming to the realization that it had been the dream again.

The same dream he had been having for nine years.

The same dream that kept him from having a restful sleep and haunted him even during the day hours, in his consciousness, for he believed that the loss was his fault; she was in _his_ arms after all, therefore _he_ was the one to blame, was he not? He would think.

With a grunt that border-lined a scream of anger and sadness, he slammed his fist into the wall next to him, unintentionally causing a rather impressively large split in the rock to appear, "Damn..." he muttered under his breath.

A concerned Ruby Toujou had been standing outside and heard all of this, and she knew what had happened again.

He had consulted her multiple times about the recurring dream that he couldn't shake, and she lowered her gaze sadly and put a hand over her heart, she knew how he felt; how it felt to lose the one who had always been there and feel as if it was your fault they were gone.

Knocking on the door quietly and timidly, she waited for a reply, and when she got none, she gently pushed the door open a little and saw her interest of the heart sitting in his chair with his hands in his hair, bunching his fists in a way that looked as if he were trying to pull his hair out, a pained expression on his face, and tears sliding down his cheeks as his shoulders quaked and his breathing was ragged in an attempt to not cry aloud.

"Tsukune-san…" She whispered softly, a sharp stinging feeling in her heart at the sight of the broken man before her, and her throat involuntarily tightened up in a manner that it had many times before when the dam was about to break and a flood soon after began pouring from her eyes.

Looking up at the woman in front of him, he sighed before casting his gaze to the floor at her feet, suddenly finding the pattern of the floor's wood grains to be very interesting in an attempt from making eye contact with her in such a state as he was in.

She closed her eyes and exhaled quietly, then made her way over to where he was sitting and began stroking his hair gently, and she winced a bit when he at first pulled away a bit at her touch, for the thought of him pulling away from her scared her, though he had done it many times before, and as he slowly relaxed more, she smiled softly and continued running her fingers through his hair in an effort to comfort him.

"Tsukune-san… You know she still lives in the Moka we know now…" She began, as she put a fingertip on his forehead and gently coaxed him into an upright sitting position so that he was looking up at her, "I know you still miss her, we all do, but it wasn't your fault; you were so happy to see her… you were only focused on that. Besides, even if you weren't focused on her, you had no way of knowing Alucard was going to have sent up those tendrils…" Looking into his eyes as the pain increased in them tenfold from the memory of the event, her expression softened sympathetically.

"I… I know, Ruby-san," He began, "but it still feels as if it's my fault… I mean… I could've moved out of the way sooner."

She frowned slightly, _It seems like he'll never forgive himself,_ the witch thought to herself, and gently pushing him back in the chair a little, she moved to sit on his lap with her arms around his neck, which surprised him at first, but the comfort of having someone, especially a good friend, so close to him was much appreciated, so he wound his arms around her waist and closed his eyes, "Tsukune-san, the two individual personalities might be gone, but now they've come together with traits from both personalities; as well as physical characteristics, also keep in mind that, had you not chanced ending your own conscious life and becoming a ghoul to save her, the Moka-san we have now wouldn't be here… You did save her in that sense, Tsukune-san, you saved them both."

As he thought about this, he knew she was right, but he still felt as though he had given them both up in a way for the new Moka who was both, he felt as if by Outer Moka leaving, the unsealed vampires wasn't herself either; rather, he felt she had been forced to change because of it whether she wished it or not, but he wasn't about to say that to Ruby again, because every time before she had a valid counter which he knew was true but for some reason couldn't bring himself to accept it.

"At least you have _a_ Moka-san, Tsukune-san, at least we all do, and it's all thanks to you," she said, unable to keep herself from smiling a bit at the fact of how he had saved her at the risk of his own life, as well as the memories that flooded back with that, all the other times he had done the same for each of them, she gently pulled his head closer until his face was nestled into her bosom, a gesture which she knew would normally embarrass him, but at the moment she knew would help comfort him.

For either of them, the moment she did that, there was no embarrassment, no underlying sexual hints from her, only the act of her attempting to comfort him, and he graciously accepted, nuzzling his face into her a bit more for more of the feeling of closeness and security he craved at the moment, which caused a light shade of pink to dust her face.

Wanting to move on to the next thing before his mind wandered back to where it had been before she had came in, and also wanting to keep _her_ mind from gradually rolling over into the gutter due to their current position, she gently nuzzled her face into the top of his head, inhaling his scent, then patted his head and slowly stood up, bringing him up by his hands to stand with her.

"Thank you, Ruby-san… I don't deserve you, or any of the others." He said, and she smiled at his modesty.

"If you only knew how much you truly do," she said, "and of how much more you do deserve."

Smiling sheepishly and scratching the back of his head as he was known to do, she smiled again and said "Now then, what more have you came up with on the new seal system?"

Taking the hint that she wanted to move on, and understanding why, he replied, "Well, I was thinking that, if possible, we could create a chain of holy locks as Mikogami had, except have rosaries linked in with the chain links at various points containing my blood in the jewel." When she cocked her head to the side in question, he continued, "I was thinking that we could take small samples of blood to put in the links from willing members of various races, and with the rosaries having my blood in them, and you placing various blessings on the links and rosaries, we could somehow also manage to familiarize the different types of blood together."

Still in a bit o confusion, she asked, "Why again do we need to have blood in the links? Aren't we just making another seal like the holy lock you had or Moka-san's rosary, except a bit more intricate?"

"No, I was intending to have one made so that I could familiarize my blood with the blood of other yokai and gain their abilities along with my own as I go, but still keep my regular body form, unlike what happened when Alucard did it."

Narrowing her eyes at him, she said "You do realize how dangerous that could be?"

"I do," He replied, simply, "But also keep in mind everything I survived so far in just a human shell; now, as a vampire, I'm sure I could take something like this."

Nodding her agreement, she went to write down his exact goals, as well as the different types of spells and wards she would have to place on the locks.

Looking over to his desk, he picked up the broken rosary that had been Moka's and smiled ruefully before kissing it softly and holding it to his heart, "Moka-san, Akasha-san, both of your wishes were the same for coexistence, and I'll make sure to make it happen for you both, if nothing else." He whispered softly, then placed it back in its container and hid it away again from those who might want to try and steal his most prized possession.

- / -

Well there's the first chapter, please note this is the first fanfiction I have ever wrote, same goes for any type of "short story/novel" themed thing. Please let me know what you think! No hate comments, but if there are any negativities you would like the politely point out, please do so, any tips are also welcome!

I already have chapters two and three typed up, but I wanna see what comments I get on this so I'll know if I need to change anything in them or not before uploading.

I'll try my best to make this as entertaining for you as I can, but I'm gonna need your help so keep the tips and requests coming :P

Also, I apologize for the spoilers in it BUT this storyline that I had in mind kinda NEEDED them in order for me to progress with it. I will not be re-doing this chapter at any point in the future, nor will I attempt to make it as though I have not spoiled the ending of the Rosario + Vampire Manga season ii.

Also, new characters will be introduced throughout the story from time to time. I will name them and their ages etc as they are introduced


	2. Chapter 2

_New Beginnings_

_Chapter Two: The First Link – Witch + Vampire_

_As with first chapter, I make no profit from this, don't own any of Rosario + Vampire, please don't copy mah stuffs :P hope you enjoy_

- / -

_As Tsukune laid away the old rosary, he turned and saw his Ruby hard at work listing all the preparations needed for the new seals. Finally, he could start fully on his new path to coexistence, and as a bonus, perhaps that could bring rest to his guilty mind._

- / -

Walking over to Ruby and smiling at how much effort she was clearly putting in to it, he questioned, "So what kind of barriers did you have in mind?" To which she cocked her head slightly, looking up at the ceiling, and placed the tip of her finger on her bottom lip, and quietly murmured the list to herself to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything.

"Oh, just some simple things, really," she replied, "just some barriers to keep the seals from being magically influenced by anyone except you or friendly peoples, namely Moka-san, Kurumu-san, Mizore-san, Yukari-san, and myself."

Nodding his approval, he followed up with yet another question, "Anything else?"

"Well, I was going to also place some stronger barriers to keep the seals from breaking apart by anyone except you, with Moka-san being the exception, as well as some assisting magic to make the familiarization of foreign yokai blood with your blood, and so on." _And by so on, I mean I'm going to include some magic to help those damned dreams whittle away and help him see that what happened wasn't his fault! Not that he needs to know, yet. _

"That sounds great, Ruby-san!" He said excitedly, and Ruby couldn't help but flush a bit under his praise. _It's surprising how much things can change, _he thought, _first it was Moka who was dependent on me to be able to remove the rosary, now I may be dependent on her to remove my seals._

He suddenly had a thought, and worried, he asked Ruby, "Also, do you happen to have anything planned to prevent what happened with my Holy Lock from happening again with this, if the worst was to come and it went wrong somehow?"

Looking up into his worried eyes and knowing what he meant, she remembered how the Holy Lock has began weakeningand he almost descended into a ghoul again, except this time with more physical changed than the first time, and how he had almost died when he removed the holy lock and became the vampire he is now.

"Well, considering you're a vampire now, I don't think that should be a problem," she started, but seeing he still didn't look comfortable, she continued, "but I can try to set something so that, if worst does come to worst, as you said, the seals should be able to repair themselves before anything goes overboard." She smiled inwardly at the relief she saw light up in his eyes, and he smiled appreciatively.

"Thank you, Ruby-san," He said, gently patting her and rubbing the top of her head.

Flushing and smiling, she sputtered at first at his affectionate thanks, "Y-you're welcome, Tsukune-san, it's always a pleasure to help you however I can."

Then, of all times, his day went from being peaceful and enjoyable straight into what was surely going to be a hectic day.

There came a loud knock at the door, and soon after, a student came bursting in, causing the doors to slam against the rock walls, at which Tsukune grit his teeth in a somewhat agitated manner.

"Headmaster! Headmaster!" One of them began in a panic, which Tsukune sighed and straightened up from where he was leaned over the table to acknowledge the students.

"What's wrong?" Tsukune asked lazily, wishing that he had been able to accomplish more on his planning before the disturbance, but, after looking over to Ruby working away, he decided she should easily handle it herself, and he couldn't help but smile at how hard she was working for his sake.

"There was another brawl between a freshman and a senior!" The student answered hurriedly, and looked at Tsukune with obvious confusion when all he did was sigh and stretch lazily, "aren't you going to come straighten everything out?" The student asked, and immediately wished he hadn't when Tsukune shot an agitated glance at him, to which he responded by visibly shrinking back a bit and apologizing feverently.

Sighing loudly, and looking over to Ruby and smirking a bit at the amusement on her expression, he turned and picked up his jacket and donned it lazily before turning back to the student, "Yes, I'm going," he started, "but chances are the worst thing it is would be the freshman getting knocked out, surely? That _is _how most brawls here turn out, after all."

"Normally yes, but on the way up here I saw more students piling into the brawl when I looked out the window!" He replied frantically, emphasizing his words with various hand gestures, the worry clear on his face, then came a loud scream from outside, and the eyes of all the inhabitants in the room widened.

"Tsukune-san I'm coming-" Ruby began, before he cut her off.

"No, you stay and keep working, or take a break and relax, I'll handle this." He said before walking to the window in the room and stepping up on to the ledge.

"H-Headmaster, what are you doing?" The student asked carefully.

"Taking a faster route, and also, please be more gentle with my doors." He said before smiling back at the student and Ruby the same, friendly smile he had always had, and jumping out of the window; the force he used when he jumped made slightly cracked indentions in the hard rock ledge, and caused a rough wind to blow inside the room from the air in and outside the room being disturbed by the quick motion, and Ruby sighed as she went to begin gathering the papers that had been strewn across the room, _He always rushes into dangerous situations without thinking it through when someone is in trouble, _she thought to herself, _well… I guess that _is_ one reason why we love him, after all._ She then looked at the student and waved him away with a smile, and the student hurried out of the room, making sure to close the door gently behind him.

- / -

Running through the trees, Tsukune heard another scream, and gritted his teeth and began running faster, _Figures, for every handful of mock brawls there are, there's always one where _someone_ manages to get seriously hurt, _he thought worriedly and agitatedly, _there weren't even _this _many brawls when I was still a student here! _

Arriving at a courtyard in the school, he saw a bit of blood splattered on the ground and building sides, as well as a few students lying on the ground, who, after being checked, were only unconscious luckily.

"_Why_ can't people just _get along?" _He sighed exasperatedly, before running again towards the sound of another commotion, and coming upon a brawl between five students, each covered in blood and in torn clothes.

They went at each other again without even noticing he was there, fighting like mad animals, and as they fought, he calmly walked up to the group, and was barely missed by a stray fist, then quickly dodged a fierce kick that had missed its intended target before grabbing the stray fist and ankle and growling as he flared his yokai fiercely and threw two of the students into opposite walls, and knocking the other three back about twenty yards by the force of his yokai.

"_Enough!" _ Tsukune yelled aggressively, flaring his yokai again to show the students his seriousness – and accidentally breaking several windows in the school in the process. "What is the meaning of this?" He demanded angrily, gesturing at the students lying on the ground and the blood everywhere, "Where are the other students? There had to be more than just you eight to cause all of this blood!"

"Some freshmen were trying to say they were better than us," One started, "somewhere along the way other people started joining in while we were showing them their place."

Another smirked slightly and followed up with, "Then in the process, we ended up fighting each other… you know how people can act in mobs like this."

"Yes, I do, and I understand putting someone in their place, but that doesn't mean going this far!" Tsukune retorted, at which the students simply shrugged, uncaring. "Well I'm stopping it. Now. Before you go back to your classes though, where are the other students?"

"Well, they're in the infirmary, some of their friends hurried and pulled them out or carried them off after they got knocked out," a smaller of the group replied, then the largest took a step forward closer to Tsukune and said, "Anyhow, what if we don't want to stop? How is one person like you going to stop all of us?" He asked cockily, and Tsukune sighed and smiled slightly before replying, "Well I guess if you refuse to stop willingly, I'll end up having to show you, but don't go home crying to your parents if you get hurt; you brought this on yourselves."

"No, _you_ brought this onto _yourself,_ headmaster!" One said, before transforming into a peculiar monster that had the shape of his normal body, but it had become slightly transparent, with the addition of what looked like small spikes protruding from the palms of his hands.

Grunting agreement, the others quickly revealed their monster selves, one turning out to be a werewolf, and Tsukune couldn't keep from chuckling at that, _Gin, is this yours? Eh, wouldn't put it past you to have slipped up already, big player,_ he thought.

The others transformed into different types of monsters, one clearly an orc, and another having blades on his forearms and knees, and, upon closer inspection, even on his fingers between the knuckle joints! The last one, he was unsure of, his body hadn't changed at all, or at least not at a first glance, but after a second look it was apparent that his body seemed to have become more rigid, as if he were made out of rock.

"Alright students," Tsukune began, clapping his hands once as if he were trying to gain the attention of a classroom, "today we learn why _not _to act up and disobey your headmaster." He finished, smiling warmly as if he weren't about to get attacked by a group of angry students.

No sooner than he finished his students, they were on him, each taking their turn, sometimes two at a time, attacking him before letting another or another two take their place, dodging all of the attempted assaults with ease, and lazily parrying punches and kicks, he became complacent, and wasn't expecting it when the one with a transparent body came up from the ground without a sound or physical evidence of doing so behind him and kicking him hard in the middle of his spine.

Gasping in surprise as the student jumped up past – or through, him rather, he glared at the student before the student chuckled arrogantly and thrust his hand outward and driving one of the spikes into Tsukune's stomach, then pulling it back out, resulting in a large amount of blood spewing from Tsukune's abdomen, and following up with a kick from a foot that was at first transparent, both visibly and physically, now turned as hard as steel, to the side of his head, making his vision swim for a bit.

After colliding with the ground hard enough to make a small crater in the concrete, Tsukune was assaulted by the biggest monster, who's body had turned more rigid than anything, slamming a hard fist into his ribcage, making him cough and grunt in pain and spit up blood.

As the largest one went for another punch, Tsukune hurriedly put his hands up to block the punch, then grabbed the student's wrist firmly before springing up out of the crater and throwing the student as hard as he could towards his classmates, and knocked them all down like bowling pins.

Taking the break he had to catch his breath, Tsukune looked down at the wound in his abdomen and ground his teeth together in a vain effort to relieve the pain a bit, _Damn, they're not that bad,_ he thought.

After catching his breath, he drew his arms up and stood in a defensive position and closed his eyes, expanding his yokai radar to detect any motion of the students towards him, and scowled grimly when he noticed one was headed for him at a very impressive speed, and the others were still just getting up, it seemed.

Opening his eyes just in time to see, no surprise, the werewolf descending from a jump onto him, he jumped and rolled out of the way of the teeth and claws coming his way, but no sooner than he did that was the student on him again, clawing and biting at him furiously, and managing to land several scratches on him, but nothing major, then Tsukune grunted once and landed a mighty kick to the student's jaw and heard a sick _crack _at the impact, _Whoops,_ Tsukune thought.

Taking of the jacket he had and sighing at all the tears in it, Tsukune said, "Alright, it's time to get serious about this before I make myself look bad!"

Taking that as a warm welcome, the ghost-like yokai and the werewolf, as well as the one with blades on his arms and knees, were all on him, kicking, punching, and clawing as fast and as hard as they could, but growing agitated as he dodged them all time after time with his hands in his pockets, then, out of nowhere, he flipped himself backwards, caught himself on his hands, and spun himself with his legs outstretched in a split, landing devastating kicks to all but the ghostly student, and sending them crashing into some trees.

"Idiot! Haven't you realized you can't touch me!?" The one student said.

"Well then," Tsukune replied, "I guess I'll have to try something else." And with that, he conjured up the weapon he hadn't used in years, his Tonfas of Light, and went quickly to using them in a test run to see if they would work against his subordinate.

_What the _fuck_ are these!? _The student thought to himself in anger and fear at the technique he had never seen, and was in even more fear as he missed dodging one of the headmaster's strikes and a cut appeared across his stomach, luckily not deep, but still just enough to draw blood.

"So these will work, huh? Great!" Tsukune said before lunging forward and slashing both of the tonfas across the student's chest and stomach, causing blood to spill from the wounds, and quickly after followed up by screaming loudly and flaring his vampiric energy enough to send the student flying through a wall in the school.

Looking over to count out the two students that were left, he walked over to them before asking the orc, "Why have you been slacking?"

"I was waiting for you to get tired out!" He laughed before thrusting a giant fist at him, which Tsukune caught with ease and suddenly vanished, leaving the poor student to look around confused to figure out what had happened.

Reappearing behind the student, Tsukune said, "Fighting lesson one: Never underestimate your opponent, and be wary of their speed." And sent a swift kick to the side of the student's neck, sending him flying sideways and crashing into a large tree, unconscious.

Sighing at how pitifully the orc faired, he thought to himself, _Well, I guess you were a grower but not a shower at all, huh? _The, walking back to the last student, who was looking at him fearfully, Tsukune questioned "Well… Not so tough now, are you?"

"I-I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!" He pleaded frantically, and he raised his hands defensively as Tsukune extended a hand, expecting a brutal strike.

"Go to the infirmary," Tsukune started, grasping the younger man's hand and pulling him up, "tell them to send a box of blood packs to my office, and tell them to send help for your friends, and the other students that may be lying around injured."

"Y-yes sir! Right away sir!"

"Oh, and one more thing, never approach me like that again, same for your friends and anyone else. I _am_ headmaster for a reason." Tsukune said coldly, despite it not being in his nature, and began his walk back to his office, tying his ruined jacket around his waist as a make-shift bandage to try and stop some of the bleeding.

- / -

From the roof, two girls had seen the fight, and looked at each other in a bit of surprise.

"Well, we know the headmaster is more than worthy of the right now, everyone does." One said.

"Yeah… And he's really cute too!" The other replied, blushing a little and tapping the tips of her index fingers together shyly.

"Hell yeah he is," The first said, "we should try to schedule up an appointment to meet him soon."

The other nodded her agreement, and the two headed off to the girl's dorms to work on their studies… Which would probably turn into a bout of gossips.

- / -

Arriving back at his office and walking in with a sigh, Tsukune sat down next to Ruby, trying not to show the pain he was in. And failing.

"Tsukune-san, what's wrong?" She asked, worried curiosity written all over her features.

"Nothing, just a little scrape, waiting on some blood packs." He answered, trying not to talk much because it felt like it made his wounds hurt worse.

"Well let me see," She started, and before he could stop her, she had removed his jacket and shirt and gasped loudly, putting her hands over her mouth and eyes wide, at the wound in her loved one, "Tsukune-san, this is a _lot_ more than just a _scrape_!"She almost screamed, and exhaling gently, he replied, "Yeah, I know, just didn't want you to worry. The blood packs will be here soon anyhow."

"Uhm… We're out of blood packs, actually…"

"What? How can we be out of blood packs? In a school of monsters how can we be out of one thing we need more than most other things?" He asked.

"Well… The blood packs we did have were set aside for you for the most part, we haven't had a chance to order any more because where we normally get them from are already using them or have sold out of the blood packs they could sell… And we've already had to use up the ones we set aside for you…"

"Ah…" Tsukune replied, and closed his eyes, unsure of what else to say.

"Tsukune-san…" Ruby started shyly, and averting eye contact despite his eyes being closed, she continued, "if you want… you could drink my blood…"

His eyes darted open and he looked at her, eyes widened and eyebrows raised at the sudden offer, "But Ruby-san – "

"Tsukune-san, it's okay, you need the blood now, you can't afford to wait; we don't know how serious that wound might actually be," and with that, she flicked her hair back to expose the pale flesh of her neck, "now drink."

Unable to fight the blush on his face, all he could say was, "Thank you, Ruby-san." And as he lowered his lips towards her neck, he inhaled her scent, unknowingly making her shudder by doing so, and he found that she smelled incredible; she smelled like a patch of beautiful flowers and dried sunflower seeds, and, gently pressing the tips of his fangs into her soft skin, she shuddered again and closed her eyes, her masochistic side kicking in as she resisted the urge to rub her thighs together, and as his fangs punctured her neck and his lips closed against her neck while he gently sucked the crimson liquid out of her, she bit her bottom lip in a failed attempt to stifle a moan, but she at least made it quieter than it would have been, and her arousal peaked at the pain she got so much pleasure from; it was all one and the same to her, pain and pleasure, and she could no longer fight the urge and began rubbing her thighs together and began breathing more heavily, which all made Tsukune's blush deepen more.

Her blood tasted amazing to him, it tasted as if he were getting the sweetness straight from a wild growing honey suckle, and combined with the slight taste of sunflower seeds it had, it was like nothing he had ever tasted.

Finally, after he was done, he withdrew his fangs from her neck, and the sad, almost pleading whine that it earned boosted his own libido past what her moan and breathing changes did earlier, and he tried his best to ignore it; and as the puncture holes closed, he softly licked the rest of her blood off of her neck and kissed it softly, earning another shiver and squeak of pleasure from her.

"Ruby-san?"

"Yes, Tsukune-san?  
>"Um… I was wondering if you would mind letting me use some of your blood for the first link…"<p>

"No, not at all!" She replied happily, and quickly got up and walked away hugging herself and still thinking of how _amazing_ it felt when he bit her, and she searched through her small desk until she found a small dropper like one would use to count out individual water droplets, and she picked up a knife and cut the tip of her finger enough for it to bleed out into a small tray she had set on the desk, and, turning to pick up a chain link that they had made a while back with a hollowed cross inside of it, she dripped her blood from the dropper into the cross until it was completely full, then she placed a spell on it to crystalize the blood somewhat so that it wouldn't spill out.

"Thank you, Ruby-san." He said, smiling warmly and scratching the back of his head a bit.

"You're welcome," She replied kindly, smiling happily as she wiped her finger clean of blood and put a bandage on it, "anything for you! Now, you should go get some rest, you've had a long day. Sleep well, Tsukune-san!"

Smiling and replying, "Same to you, Ruby-san." Tsukune decided she was right, and so, having had a long day, Tsukune went off into his room that was connected to the office, and Ruby did the same in a room next to his to conduct her own research further into seals and spells while he slept and allowed his wounds to heal.

- / -

Meanwhile, in the girl's dorm, as well as the boy's, the story of Tsukune's encounter with the students earlier was growing and spreading like a wildfire, and the two girls from earlier sat in their dorm room and looked through the old publishes of the fabled News Paper Club in an attempt to find out more about their headmaster and his assistant.

"Let's go meet him tomorrow! I can't wait very long before meeting him, I wanna do it as soon as possible! I wanna see how cute he is close up!"

"Yeah, sounds like a plan… But we should sleep first, so good night, we'll go tomorrow as soon as possible."

"Yay! Good night, sis!"

- / -

Well, I got a few pretty good reviews on the first chapter, which I appreciate, I hope you all like this just as much, sorry about the ending possibly being rushed seeming for this chapter if it is to you, I just kinda ran a little dry towards the end on things I could do with this one, having the people being introduced a bit so far are asleep or going to sleep, and the characters that took up a bit of space earlier are in the infirmary by now, etc.


	3. Chapter 3

_New Beginnings:_

_Chapter Three: 40% Angel, 40% Demon, and 20% For a Stalker_

_Hey guys, I'm back with the third chapter, I hope you all enjoy it! Please leave reviews._

_Note; I do not make money from this nor do I own anything having to do with Rosario + Vampire anime or manga_

- /-

_He's so cute when he sleeps, _she thought, looking through the window, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand and smiling, _Maybe I could sneak into his bed and he wouldn't notice…_

Just then, she heard a groan that sounded to be of pain coming from the sleeping form in front of her, and she cocked her head to the side, suddenly worried, and she quietly made her way to his bedside and pulled back the blankets covering him to see his hands pressed to his stomach and a pained expression on his face, _Tummy aches?_ She thought, then moving his hands carefully, she felt something warm and wet on them, and narrowing her eyes in curiosity, she lifted his shirt a bit to find the wound he had earned earlier and just barely managed to stop a scream of fear at the wound and replaced it with a gasp that was louder than she had hoped it to be, and, looking at her hands, trembling in fear and eyes widened with worry, she ran as quickly, but quietly, as she could out of his room and to Ruby's room and shook her vigorously until she was awake, her heart still pounding and straining to control her breathing.

"Ruby! Ruby!" She hissed intensely, wanting an explanation as soon as possible.

"Hmmnn? Whaa?" A tired Ruby said, slowly opening her eyes and inhaling sharply at the surprise of seeing her old friend before her, "Ah! Mizore-san!" She exclaimed, only to be shushed by Mizore's hand being put over her mouth.

"Yeah yeah nice to see you too," Mizore began, "but what the hell happened to Tsukune? He has a huge hole in his side…"

"He had to break up a fight yesterday," Ruby replied, "A kid stabbed him, it should be almost healed by now."

"Well I'll be sure to let medical centers around the world know that now "almost healed" apparently means "I have a gaping wound in my side that for some reason isn't bleeding but is still there and hurts like a bitch."" Mizore replied, and even in the dark of Ruby's room, she could see that her skin went several shades paler.

"What!?" Ruby cried, panicked, and quickly got up from her seat she had fallen asleep in last night and went frantically through her spell books in an attempt to find something that could help Tsukune, and having no luck.

"Ruby," Mizore said, "Maybe you don't have anything here about this? I mean, have you ever heard of a wound like what Tsukune has?"

Pausing and placing her hands on the back of a chair to think, she eventually sighed and slumped her back in defeat, "No, I don't guess I have anything…" She admitted sadly, "I guess I could try putting some pain relieving spells on him until we can find something…"

"Well then, come on!" Mizore almost yelled at her friend's lack of action, and proceeded to pull her out of the room and into Tsukune's.

As they crept silently into the room, there came a series of soft sobs to heart-wrenching ones from Tsukune's bed, and after a concernedly curious look from Mizore, Ruby replied, "He has dreams a lot about what happened to Moka-san in the fight with Alucard…" And sad realization dawned in the snow girl's eyes, and together they crept towards Tsukune's bedside.

"Alright, Mizore-san, give me just a few minutes… I failed Tsukune in being supposed to have the ability to heal all his wounds for him again if his vampiric regeneration can't for some reason again… This is the least I can do, so stand back and let me concentrate, okay?"

Nodding quiet agreement, Mizore mouthed, "Just hurry." To her, and took a few steps back and sat on the window ledge she was sitting in earlier.

Sighing and closing her eyes to collect herself, Ruby began tracing invisible patterns around the injury and murmured inaudible streams of words under her breath, and so came an immense magical pressure in the room, _She's really giving it her all,_ Mizore thought to herself, _but then again, we all would if it was to help him somehow._

As she continued tracing the patterns, a dim pink light began shining inside of Tsukune's wound, and Ruby began tracing circles around the wound with her fingertip before gently licking her fingertip and cutting it with the same knife as earlier and tracing slightly larger circles around the injury, which made Mizore curious, but she decided it to be best left unknown to her.

Finally, after a good five minutes of murmuring and tracing invisible patterns, a bright red pentagram appeared over the wound, which Ruby pushed inside the wound until it looked as if a faint red light was growing from inside of him along with the pink light.

Standing and walking over to Mizore, Ruby whispered, "I'm finished, let's go." And they both took their leave from Tsukune's room.

When they got outside and shut the door, Mizore asked, "So, what was the lightshow about?"

"Well, the pink one I added in first to make sure I didn't forget, but it was to make him either stop dreaming for the night, or to have happy dreams instead of… that dream…" Which made Mizore smile for knowing that he would have a peaceful sleep, "And the pentagram was from the blood and saliva, I had to use my blood and saliva as a recognizable DNA for him, since he had to drink from me earlier – it was a last minute emergency resort," She added quickly, seeing the bit of jealousy as well as mischievous curiosity light up in the snow woman's eyes, "But anyhow, I could have done it without the blood and all, but the pain relieving effect is stronger since it was made with a signature blood source that has been remembered, I guess you could say, either way, the lights will fade in about thirty minutes, but the pain relief should last most of tomorrow."

"Ah," Mizore replied, "Well, you go on back to sleep then, I'll hold the fort I guess."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather talk some?" Ruby asked, frowning slightly.

"Nah, we can talk later, I'm sure that all that took up a bit of your energy, so go on, good night, Ruby."

"Thank you," Ruby replied kindly, "Same to your, Mizore-san." And with that, she went back to her room, and Mizore was left to sit in Tsukune's chair, which she knew only few other than him were privileged enough to have that chance, and she knew she was one of those few people who had the privilege and didn't have to ask permission, so no harm done.

"Eh, what the hell," She said to no one in particular, and conjured up some ice clones to protect the room and some icy barricades at the doors as extra precautions, and the windows as well, and she got up and went to Tsukune's room to watch her love sleep, "Even if he can't talk at the moment, it's still _so _much better than being stuck out here alone."

- / -

Waking up and yawning cutely, the young girl looked over to her sister sleeping and stretched before looking at the clock and seeing that they only had about an hour before they had to get up and get ready for the next day of school anyhow, so, shrugging, she went to take a shower.

Turning on the shower, she stripped herself free of her night gown and stepped in to the water, sighing happily at the feeling of the warm water running over her body. She reached out and grabbed her shampoo and began washing her hair, thinking of how wonderful it felt to take a shower, it was a sad thing that she couldn't stay in the shower all day.

Then, her mind went to her headmaster, who, to her and other students, was just as mysterious with his past as he was kindhearted; no one knew where he was from, some had an idea of what kind of monster he was, however, and no one really ever tried to figure it out for some reason, _Gosh, he's so cute though… and really, really strong,_ she thought to herself, remembering back to what she had seen the day before, and blushed deeply and shook her head fiercely when she found her mind wandering to the thought of having those strong arms of his wrapped around _her._

_Darn it! Bad girl! Get your head out of the gutter! _She scolded herself, and decided it was probably best she take a cold shower that morning.

Unfortunately for her, in her hurry to beat back the heat growing in her, not just from the warm water, she accidentally turned the water too cold too fast, and screamed loudly at the unexpected temperature drop, _I think I might need to go ahead and get out, _she thought, planning to dry herself off of both the wetness from the shower as well as a bit of wetness _not _from the shower.

...

Waking up with a grunt and a long, overly exaggerated sigh, the second girl inhabiting the dorm room awoke due to the screaming.

"Damn it, sis, why do you have to be so clumsy all the time…" She muttered under her breath grumpily before sitting up on the side of her bed and looking to the clock to see there was still another forty-five minutes until the time when they were scheduled to normally wake up.

"Why…. In the hell... are you up _SO EARLY!?"_ She called grumpily, to which she got a surprised "eep!" from her younger sister, followed by, "Well, I woke up a few minutes ago and I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd go on and get ready for the day!" Then she heard the sound of the water being turned off, "Plus I was gonna wake you up in a few more minutes anyhow so that we could try and get to the headmaster's office with time to spare before we had to get to class."

Proud as she was of her clumsy little sister thinking ahead, she still disliked the startling wake-up call, "Well that's all well and good, but hows about next time you try giving me a _gentle_ wake up instead of making me think it was an emergency?"

"I sorry, sis!" Came a cheerful reply, which she leaned her head back and groaned exasperatedly at how much of a morning person the girl was, then her head popped out through a crack in the slightly open doorway to the bath room and she said in a playfully teasing voice, with a look of mock terror on her face, "But it was an emergency!" Adding fake urgency to her voice, and gaining an annoyed glance from her older sister, "I almost froze myself solid! I thought "oh no! Is this really how I die?!"

"Meh… Anyhow go ahead and get dressed." Was her reply, and she went to go about finishing getting ready and humming a happy tune while her sister went to get ready as well.

- / -

Walking down the hallway, the two sighed at the _same_ looks they got from the _same _boys at the _same _time _every day_.

"God it's annoying now," Said the older, "At first it was a nice confidence booster and all, yeah, but geez, they act like they've never seen us before."

"I know," The other pouted, "I don't like the way they look at us… it makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Hey girls, I thought that maybe after school you two would like to take a nice little walk through the woods with me?" Came a voice from behind, and out of nowhere an arm was draped around each of their shoulders, and they found themselves separated by a boy who looked to be in his second year at the academy.

"Well," began the older, turning to him and trailing a finger down his jaw line gently, "I have a better idea…"

"Oh yeah?" Replied the boy, smiling smugly, "And what might that be?"

"Well first I thought we could ask you to leave us alone now… But I changed my mind." She continued, grinning mischievously and making her sister gulp in nervousness, "I thought that maybe we _could _go on that walk…" And she then placed her lips next to his ear whispering softly, "Then I could break a tree branch off in your perverted little ass and make an example of you to the rest of the boys~! How does that sound, big guy?"

She felt his body go rigid and heard him gulp heavily before he backed away slowly, "O-oh shit! No no no, I don't want that, hell no! I'm not in to S and M!" He cried, running away as fast as he could, and almost tripping several times, earning a spell of laughter from the older sibling, which finally spread to the younger and they stood and laughed in the school hallway until they were crying and their sides were hurting to no end.

Finally calming down, the older put her arm around the younger's shoulder, still stifling a giggle from time to time, "Well, let's go ahead and get to the headmaster's office before we end up running into a masochist."

"Yeah!" Replied her sister happily.

- / -

"Ugghhnnggg…." Came a low groan from Tsukune, waking up and blinking a few times.

"What the hell, brain?" He asked himself aloud, recalling having had a dream last night full of strange dreams, one of which included him being a host for some strange game show, and another in which he was acting in a movie as a damsel in distress, "I worry about my mental self sometimes…" He muttered, then his mind began trailing back to the fragments of the last part of his dream that were gradually piecing together, and he almost had a possibly body-draining nosebleed when he recalled a rather vivid dream of carnality between himself and another individual, namely a silver-haired vampiress.

"Sweet Jesus," he said, "Looks like today's gonna start off with a cold bath…" Then, getting out of bed, he noticed Mizore asleep against the wall on the other side of the room, and he couldn't help but jump a bit in surprise, _When did she get here?_ He wondered, then carefully took his blanket from his bed and draped it over her gently, and flushed a bit then smiled as she bunched a bit of the blanket up in her hands and nuzzled her face into it, muttering "Tsukune…" into it quietly.

Stepping out of his room, he took rather quick notice of the temperature being freezing in his office, and of the ice clones patrolling the office and the icy barricades around the windows and doors.

_Somebody didn't want any unwelcomed visitors,_ he thought, chuckling softly, then, walking over to the barricade in front of the door, then to the window, he broke them down as quietly as he could then opened the window and took in the cool morning air, smiling, then turned back to the ice clones in the room.

"Nothing like a bit of morning sparring, I suppose." He said before going to begin a bit of a sparring match with Mizore's ice clones.

There was a knock at the door, but he was too tired to notice, and, surprisingly, there never came any signs of Ruby or Mizore being woken up from the sparring.

"_What do you think is going on in there?" _Came a voice from outside, and Tsukune briefly stopped to listen and make sure his ears hadn't deceived him.

"Come on in." He said, a bit hesitantly, fearful of looking like an idiot if there was no one outside, despite no one else being around to hear him, and as he heard the door creak open a bit, he turned, looked at the doorway for a brief moment, and went back to his sparring with the last two of the ice clones.

A pair of small feet stepped shyly into the room, followed by another pair of feet, more confidently, and then came to be seen two young girls standing in the doorway, followed by a small, sharp intake of breath from them both, in admiration of both the sparring before them being so carefree in such an important room, as well as in admiration and _deep _approval of what they could see of the body in front of them doing the sparring.

"Wow…" Came the whisper of the younger, her eyes wide and mouth hanging slightly open.

"I think _yes._" The older followed up with in a low purr.

Before them was their headmaster, in nothing but a pair of pants, sparring away with a couple of girls who looked to be twins, gracefully dodging their punches and kicks, occasionally parrying them.

As they watched his muscles flex and move under his skin, they couldn't help but stare in appreciation at the sight before them, and the scars that were laced across his back, shoulders, and arms weren't too high in quantity, so they didn't look unpleasant, but they did, however, seem to make him all the more attractive in their eyes as well as mysterious, sparking curiosity about the fights that he must have been in in order for someone of his obvious power to be scarred.

He turned his head slightly and smiled in a friendly manner before holding up his hand with his index finger extended, indicating to them to be patient and he was almost finished.

"Go on and take a seat if you want," Tsukune said, catching the wrist of one of the girls before tossing her aside and jumping away from an ice shard launched at him by the other, "I'll be with you in just a second."

They nodded appreciation and walked over to a small, but rather comfortable looking couch, and sat down and continued to watch the show before them.

Once again, one of the twin girls launched themselves at him, this time with a dagger of ice in their hand, and he simply side-stepped out of the way, grabbed her wrist and pried the dagger free, and stabbed it into her neck, making the two young students gasp in fear, but relax shortly after when the girl simply turned to ice and burst into tiny fragments, and, throwing the dagger at the other girl, Tsukune finished up rather quickly as it hit its mark between her eyes, and she too burst into millions of crystalline ice shards.

"Well, thank you for your patience," Tsukune began, "If you'll have just a bit more, I'm going to put on a shirt, I don't think it would exactly be fitting for the headmaster to be shirtless in company of his students, would it?"

Barely restraining a whine of disappointment, but unable to keep the saddened look from their faces, the two girls nodded their agreement, and as Tsukune turned towards them to walk back into what they could only assume was his own private room, they both flushed at the new part of his amazing physique they could now see, not made any less eye-pleasing by the larger scars across his chest and abdomen, forming an "X" on his torso, until they spotted what looked to be a large hole just above his hipline, and both of their mouths gaped in surprise at that, at the wound they knew he had gotten the day before from breaking up the fight between the students, and before the eldest could say anything, her sister was already up and sprinting to her headmaster, getting on her knees to further inspect the wound.

Taken aback a bit by the sudden action, Tsukune blushed profusely at the current position the student was in and glanced quickly between her and the other student, hoping desperately for an elaboration of some sort; he then, however, felt a soft touch against his abdomen and flushed even more before looking down and realizing, somehow for the first time that day, that the wound from the day before was still there, except it wasn't hurting or bleeding, and his mouth went dry and he was lost for words.

"Idiot! What are you doing!?" Cried the older of the two, louder than she had expected, and they heard the rustling and grunting of female voices coming from the two private rooms attached to the office, and soon after out walked a pale-skinned girl with pink eyes, brown hair, and a rather _large_ bust and hip measurement, and from the other came another pale-skinned girl, but this time with a light purple shade of hair color, beautiful blue eyes, and a smaller set of body measurements, but still an easily amazing figure.

"Geez, Tsukune…" The first of the girls to come out began, "What's with all the noise?" Then, as she and the other girl noticed the two students in the room, their eyes widened, particularly at the position one of the students was in, in front of _their _Tsukune, no less, and suddenly ice shot up from the ground in front of the students, dangerously close to their necks, causing them to freeze in fear.

"Tsukune, explain, now." The purple-haired girl said simply, and Tsukune gulped before replying.

"I-I don't know, Mizore-san! I swear! I finished sparring around with your ice clones and they had came in, then they saw the hole in my side and this one just… came running over here."

Eyeing them distrustfully, Mizore nodded affirmation, and the other woman stepped up, "Well, yeah… about the wound," She began, "For some reason, as you know now, it hasn't healed, and we need to figure out why as soon as possible."

"Uhm…" A shy voice piped up, and looking to the source, it was the girl on the ground in front of Tsukune, trembling and eyes watering with fright at the sudden act of aggression against her, Mizore sighed, _Damn, I think I overreacted…_ And withdrew the ice, "I-I know why it hasn't healed…"

"The kid who stabbed him yesterday was a monster that was more or less bred for being able to kill vampires," The older began, "The spikes in their hands have toxins in them that don't really harm the one they stab, but will prevent the injuries from healing as quickly as normal, if at all, without outside help. Now that that's out of the way, can we get a proper introduction before we go on so that way _next _time we might have to come here we won't have to worry about almost having ice driven through our necks?" She finished sarcastically, making Mizore huff in annoyance.

"Y-yeah, that would probably be best," Tsukune started before ushering everyone to sit, and sitting in his own chair behind his desk.

"B-but… it would really be best to do something _now_, sis…" The young, shy girl said hesitantly, looking to who was apparently her older sister for consent.

Looking back to the wound at Tsukune's side, she sighed and nodded, "You're right, go ahead." And with that, the younger smiled happily before walking over to Tsukune and placing her hands over the injury and murmuring under her breath. "Don't interrupt her, please, or it'll screw it up if she gets distracted, and it might not heal completely."

"R-right…" Tsukune said nervously, unable to keep the blush on his face hidden well at the girl being so close to him again and her gentle touch, and he could _feel _the jealous glares from Mizore and Ruby boring into his back.

"Anyhow…" He tried again, "As you know, obviously, I'm the headmaster, Tsukune Aono," and, indicating Mizore and Ruby, "And she is Mizore Shirayuki-san, and Ruby Toujou-san, my assistant, and both old friends." Each nodding in turn as their name was called out, the girl sitting across from them smiled and crossed her legs in her seat.

"Well, it could've been a warmer welcome, I suppose, but it's still nice to meet you all, especially with you having been from the Newspaper Club I've heard about so much," She started, earning an apologetic look from Mizore, and continuing, "My name is Rianne Falsworn, and she," She indicated to the girl murmuring over Tsukune, "Is my little sister, Seraphim Falsworn, but I go by Ria, and she goes by Seras."

"Well, it's nice to meet you both," Tsukune started with a friendly smile, causing Ria's cheeks to become slightly dusted with pink, and earning an "mmhm" of agreement to his statement from Ruby and Mizore, "Now, what year are you both in?"

"We're both in our third year, actually," Ria answered, "But we were homeschooled through most of our time, and we just decided to come this year to see if it was worth being home schooled."

"I see, well –" Tsukune started, before being cut off by Mizore.

"How long is it going to take to finish healing Tsukune?" She questioned bluntly, as well as surprising Ria with the lack of honorifics.

"Well, she should be getting about done, have you started feeling anything strange, Tsukune-san?"

Trying to ignore the sputtering of Mizore and Ruby, who most likely misinterpreted her question, he replied, "Well, the area itches pretty bad from time to time, and it has a few random moments of numbing and tingling, what not." Then, looking down curiously at his stomach, he saw that his wound was fully healed, at least on the surface, and there was a faint green light radiating from inside his body where the hole had been.

"Yeah, the itching is the skin and muscles healing back together, the rest is just the nerve cells realigning and connecting back together, boring stuff really."

"I'm done." Seras said, standing and glancing at Tsukune.

"Thanks, I really appreciate it." He said, smiling warmly and scratching the back of his head as he was known to do, and, in the process, causing her to blush madly.

Hanging her head low to try and hide it with her bangs and tapping her index fingertips together, she said, with a bit of difficulty, "Y-you're w-welcome!" Before running over to sit by her sister.

_Geez, their blushing and what not, as well as my own, must be really pissing off Mizore and Ruby_, he thought with a bit of regret, for fear of her icy kunais, _Yep, Mizore is definitely the most dangerous, I think._

"So, if you don't mind us asking, what kind of monsters are you two?" Ruby asked with obvious curiosity.

"Well," Seras began, "I'm an archangel."

"And I'm an archdemon," Ria finished, "I'm not sure how we're two different kinds of monsters and still sisters, but we are."

Nodding her understanding, Ruby continued with "Well, I'm a witch, Mizore is a yuki-onna, and Tsukune here is a vampire who used to be a human." The last statement surprised the girls slightly, and it seemed they were lost for words.

The three oldest of the people in the room all took a bit to observe the girls a bit more since they had more of a chance, they were both incredibly beautiful, Ria had deep red eyes, the same color as Inner Moka's, and now Tsukune's, as well as a body that was similar to a certain succubus they knew, and they all had a brief moment of amused worry at the thought of _Does she use charms too?_ Except for a difference that her bust was slightly smaller than Kurumu's, but not much, and her hips and rear looked possibly a bit _bigger _than Kurumu's; aside from that, she had long, flowing black hair that bled into a crimson the same color as her eyes as it got closer to the ends, and rather pale skin.

Seras was rather beautiful herself, with bright, blue eyes, snowy-white hair that bled into a dark blue as it got closer to the ends, and a body that was very similar to Mizore's, except her skin was just a couple of shades darker than Mizore's.

"S-so, Tsukune-san," Seras started sheepishly, and felt even more nervous as Tsukune cast a curious look at her, suddenly unsure if she should ask her question or not, "Um… I was curious… If it's okay with you for me to ask of course, if we could know—"

"Where it was you got your scars?" Ria finished, wanting to prevent her sister from beating around the bush any longer.

"Eep"-ing a bit in surprise at both her sister's interruption as well as her straight-forwardness, she nodded agreement with a bit of guilt, because she knew it was most likely a very sensitive subject.

"That's none of your business!" Mizore hissed dangerously, causing the two girls to visibly shrink back, "You wouldn't understand, you couldn't!" She continued, only calming slightly when Ruby placed a hand on her shoulder gently, "Those scars are all filled with unimaginable, unspeakable pain that _no one but us, especially him, _could understand, you should feel ashamed for—" She was cut off by Tsukune calling her name and holding up his hand, his expression slightly saddened with both memories of gaining the scars and the fact of how much he knew it hurt her and their other friends to remember them.

"It's okay, Mizore-san," Tsukune whispered softly, and, standing and removing his shirt, an act that would have normally made all members in the room flush a bit, gave them no feeling of excitement or embarrassment due to the somber mood thickly layering the room; the feeling of sadness was almost suffocating for the two students, "These," He started, pointing to the "X" of scars on his abdomen, "I got while I was still just a person with a holy lock becoming accustomed to the vampire blood I had been injected with soon beforehand; I was fighting to save the dear friend of mine who had saved me countless times before from a group of rogue yokai named Antithesis, one of the monsters, as most were, was some type of hybrid monster who almost killed me that day, cutting completely through my body, I still don't know how I survived, I guess it was both the vampire blood along with wanting desperately to save her."

Casting their eyes down in guilt for bringing up the subject, they began apologizing, which he would tell them was fine, that he didn't mind telling them.

"This," He said, pointing to a scar near his side that had a counterpart on his back in about the same place as well as other various, smaller scars that laced over his back here and there, "Was when I was found out to be a human in my first year and I was meant to be executed, but the girl who saved me time and time again fought as if her own life were at stake against the chief of the Student Police leader, a man who was a spirit fox named Kuyou, towards the end of the fight, he was about to kill her, but I jumped in the way at the last second and got impaled by his spear of fire, which exploded soon after, causing more scars on my back."

He smiled sadly as Seras and Ria involuntarily placed their hands over their hearts as their eyes grew wider in shock, "So you took all this as just a human?" Ria asked, earning a nod from Tsukune.

"Yeah," He replied, before showing them some smaller scars on his shoulders and biceps, to which Ruby sighed guiltily, "These were from just before Ruby-san became our friend, I got them saving the vampiress who saved my life earlier from Ruby-san's master, who had a hate for the human race, as did Ruby-san at the time, for taking away most everything she loved; as revenge against the humans, she intended to merge herself with her plant creations and embark on a slaughter of all humans they saw… Luckily, Ruby-san saw the good in humans, finally, and everything went back to being peaceful as her master passed on." He finished, noting that Ria's eyes were a bit misty and Seras's eyes were already leaking tears down her cheeks, he decided it best not to continue with the rest of his scars, so he put his shirt back on and moved to sit with Mizore and Ruby, putting his arms around their shoulders comfortingly.

Just barely managing to keep back the choke of a sob, Ria asked, "Who was the vampire girl?"

"Moka Akashiya-san." Ruby, Mizore, and Tsukune replied in unison, Ruby continuing with, "She's an amazing girl; kind, light-hearted, strong, protective, and loyal."

Tsukune smiled and picked up where Ruby left off, "Always persistent in brightening up everyone's day, despite being so strong she's amazingly fragile and is scared of being alone again more than anything." Which made him begin to feel a bit guilty, and he decided that he would need to take a chance to try and see her soon.

"And her and Tsukune have been through more than any of us could truly imagine," Mizore continued, looking at Tsukune and knowing that he loved her, and felt a twinge of jealousy at the fact, "Between suffering injuries for one another, to uncertainties about whether they should be near each other anymore for the other's safety," She was beginning to choke up a bit, both from the memories she had of seeing what they went through together; much more than she and the others had gone through with Tsukune, as well as what she had heard they went through because of her and before they met her, "from having others toy with and try to kill them," She added with guilt, "To…" She couldn't continue, remembering the fight with Alucard and what had happened during that time their, feeling the most sadness at the way Tsukune had looked with Moka lying limp in his arms, and the way he cried, as well as the memory of how he almost killed himself to save her during that fight.

"Shh, it's okay…" Tsukune whispered, his own voice trembling with sadness as he pulled her closer to him, and when she felt his tears land on her shoulder, she nuzzled in to his chest as close as she could and began sobbing softly while Ruby sat on her knees and hugged them both, taking all of her effort trying not to cry herself.

Seras and Ria almost couldn't believe their eyes, or their ears; sitting before them were three of the strongest people most anyone had ever heard of, three of the eight people in the legendary Newspaper Club who had overcome impossible odds time and time again, yet here they were, weeping their hearts out over memories that were still so vivid and powerful to them that it was almost as if someone was stabbing and slashing at their souls with knives.

"Seraphim, I think we should go." Ria whispered softly.

"Yeah, come on." Seras answered, standing and wiping her eyes, and together they quietly walked out of the doorway, waving to Tsukune as he looked up at them leaving and smiled at them with his friendly smile as best he could, but they could still tell it was grief-stricken in his eyes and by the tears streaking down his face.

As they left, they closed the door to the headmaster's office as gently as they could, and began their walk to their first class, leaving the other three in the room alone to mourn their memories as they needed.

"Wow…" Seras said, the sadness obvious in her voice, "Who would've thought… Someone so happy would have had such a hard time…"

"Yeah…" Ria said, hugging herself, "It's so sad… I guess they've just learned to deal with it somehow and look at the bright side."

"I wish we could help them somehow," Seras continued, moving a little closer to Ria, both of them now deciding that it's best to appreciate each other even more than before, "I mean, as an angel, especially one of such high caliber, it should be well within my capabilities to make them feel better, but I just went blank, I don't know how to say it… It's like…"

"It's like the one girl was right; we can't understand what it was like because we weren't there." Ria finished, to which Seras nodded, "Well, I'm sure we can find some way eventually; maybe we could start up something for the school festivals that honors them? Like let them come together and make a speech or something, I don't know, or maybe we could try and throw some kind of party for them all, we'd just need to find the others that were the main people in the group of theirs."

"That sounds like a great idea!" Seras exclaimed happily, "It would be a great chance for Tsukune-san and the others to get back together, and they could all get to know the students better and tell stories of their pasts before and after meeting each other!"

"Yeah," Ria agreed, smiling and feeling a bit triumphant at the fact that she and her sister may be of some use to the veteran newspaper club members, then, looking at a clock on the wall and seeing that they were almost late for their first class, she gasped and grabbed Seras's hand and began sprinting down the hallway, "Let's go! Hurry!"

- / -

After what felt like hours of sobbing, Tsukune finally stopped and stroked Ruby's and Mizore's hair gently until they finished and held them close to him, all three of them enjoying the feeling of closeness between them; the only thing that could make it better were if Moka and Kurumu were there as well, and even Yukari as well, despite her having such a dirty mind in most scenarios.

"Well… It feels a little better to have let it all out for a bit…" Tsukune started off, and smiling when he felt Mizore nuzzle into his side more and Ruby nuzzling her head into the side of his neck.

He was enjoying this so very much, not for perverse reasons, but for the simple fact that they each supported each other and helped to nullify their insecurities, and the simple feeling of belonging and of being loved and wanted by them both and being so close to them, it was amazing at how peaceful his soul was at that moment.

Then his mind flicked back to Moka, and he closed his eyes and sighed mentally, _I'm so sorry I haven't been able to come see you_, he thought, _and you as well, Kurumu,_ then he even regretted not having seen Yukari or his other high school friends lately, but decided that they were probably doing better on their own than Moka or Kurumu, for various reasons, _I'll be sure to see you both soon,_ he promised, more to himself if no one else.

His thoughts were interrupted by soft snoring at his right side, coming from Mizore, and a slow, gentle breathing pattern from his left side; Ruby, and, deciding they had taken the right course of action, he closed his own eyes and gradually drifted off in to sleep with them, having the first bit of peaceful sleep without any dreams what so ever in what seemed like an eternity, deciding that any plans he may have had could be put off until tomorrow.

- / -

There it is, I hope you enjoyed. I'm still working on chapter four, but I'll get there! Let me know in private messages on what you would think of lemons in the fanfic as well?


	4. Chapter 4

_New Beginnings_

_Chapter Four: Re-kindling a Flame_

_Same as usual, I don't own R+V or anything to do with the official releases, nor do I profit from this fanfiction._

- / -

Waking up and looking up to a clock on his wall, he saw that he had apparently slept through the rest of the day before, and most of the night, for it was already 5:23 AM, _Wow, that was a good sleep, _he thought, then raking around as well as he could in his groggy state in his brain, he also realized that he apparently hadn't had any dreams either, _Finally, a peaceful sleep._

But, as usual, his peace was soon interrupted once he woke up a bit more and looked around him to notice he was now alone, and, of course, he began worrying.

"Oh no, where did they go?" He asked no one, and began looking around his office frantically for Mizore and Ruby, worrying that something might have happened to them while he was asleep.

"Where'd they go where'd they go where'd they go?" He asked again as he raised a hand to open the door to Ruby's room when he heard a small grumble from behind him.

"Where's _who?"_ He heard a familiar voice ask groggily, and as he spun around to the direction of the voice, he saw Ruby sitting up slowly in her own chair behind her desk and looking at him, her eyelids heavy with sleepiness.

"Ruby-san!" Tsukune exclaimed happily, speed-walking over to her and hugging her before patting her head, which made her turn an amusing shade of red.

"W-well…" She started, "Not that I don't mind being woken up to get a hug from you, but why were you panicking? Did something happen?"

"O-oh, n-no, sorry," He replied apologetically, scratching the back of his head and smiling sheepishly, "I just woke up and saw you and Mizore-san were gone, and I got a bit worried; I didn't know if something had happened while I was asleep."

"Ohhh no, no," Ruby said, smiling, "I woke up and saw you still sleeping, so I came over here to work on the structure for the seal links a bit, and then a while later Mizore-san woke up and went on for a bit on how cute you are when you sleep," She giggled when she saw him blush nervously; if it was at the fact of him being called cute, or the fact that Mizore had watched him sleep, however, she didn't know, but it was still a cute sight to her all the same, "Afterwards, she said she was going to go walk around the school for a bit and get some breakfast or something like that; I couldn't quite understand because she was mumbling. She couldn't have left any more than maybe an hour and a half ago, because I had been up working a while before she woke up, and I didn't fall back asleep until around," She glanced up at the clock again, "Maybe thirty minutes ago."

"I see…" Tsukune said, sitting down on Ruby's desk.

"What did you think of the two students earlier?" She asked, glancing up out of the corner of her eye at him, "Seras-san and Ria-san, I mean."

"Oh, well, they seemed nice, I suppose," He said, and seeing her knowing look and remembering back to the position she had found him in with Seras he turned a deep scarlet, "W-well, not meaning like that of course! I just mean they seem like they're friendly people. If I'm honest, Seras-san reminded me of Moka-san in a way," Earning a nod of agreement from Ruby, "Just similar personalities, as well as the shyness and all."

"Mmmhm," Ruby replied, "And Ria-san reminded me a bit of Kokoa-san, with her straight-forwardness – except much nicer and more respectful, of course."

"Yeah, it kinda got me thinking, too…" Tsukune said, looking up at the ceiling.

"Of seeing Moka-san again?" Ruby completed his thought, saying it as a question despite knowing the answer.

"Yeah." He said with a sigh, "And Kurumu-san too, if I'm honest; here all they've wanted mainly was to have friends they'd be with their whole lives, but we ended up separated for the most part; it must be really hard on them. Even Yukari-san." He said, with a tone of obvious guilt in his voice.

Ruby sighed a bit in understanding of how he felt; she couldn't help but feel a bit guilty herself, mostly for not having seen Yukari any lately. She knew that Moka and Kurumu had family they could go home to, but Yukari's parents, as far as she knew, were still in the monsters' world, whereas Yukari had gone off into the human world.

She had been alone most of her life, or almost alone, and she knew Yukari, the first witch near her age she had ever seen, had to have felt the same; she knew how scary it was to feel unaccepted by either side of humans or monsters, how it felt to be persecuted by both sides, and how feeling so alone can damage you seemingly beyond repair.

But then she had met Tsukune and the others, and they showed him a kindness like she has never felt before, not even her former master had shown her such kindness, and she was too young when her parents died to know how well they treated her.

The funniest thing was, she had tried to kidnap Yukari, as well as kill the others multiple times, she shuddered at the memory, but they _still_ showed her kindness and mercy, they _still _showed her that they wanted to make peace, and, most importantly of all, they showed her that they _wanted _her to be their _friend_. They _wanted her._ No one else had ever wanted her, except as somewhat of a pawn, everyone else had always wanted to degrade her, to the point where she was driven to live her life in hiding, waiting for the day when she could get vengeance.

She knew that Yukari had felt the same way, except her idea of "vengeance" had been less extreme. She also know that Yukari had felt the same when she was excepted by Tsukune, Moka, and Kurumu; that warmth and happiness that became an addiction, a necessity to life, even. She knew how wonderful it felt when she was surrounded by her friends, but at the same time sad when she wasn't, though the knowing of having them always cheered her up, so she knew how Yukari must feel now that she was separated from the group.

"I'm sure they're all fine," Ruby said, and pat his hand reassuringly, though she knew Kurumu was most likely in a fix, considering her live thrived on being near her loved one, "If you want, you could take off and go see them while Mizore-san and I stay here and keep things running."

"No, no, what if something happened?" He said, frowning worriedly.

"Tsukune-san, look at everything we've been through together," She started, putting down her pen and looking up at him, crossing her arms under her bosom, "Don't you think we can handle some students?"

Looking at her thoughtfully, he sighed and smiled in defeat, "You're right, Ruby-san," He said, "If you're completely sure, then I'll go ahead and get my stuff together and head out in a bit."

"I'm sure, Tsukune-san," She said, smiling, both in reassurance and of pride that she could sway his opinion, as well as the fact that she knew he had faith in her and Mizore, "Just be sure you don't get _too _rowdy, especially when Kurumu comes in to the picture." She said, purposefully suggestively.

Bursting red like a tomato, Tsukune sputtered and almost fell off of her desk, but he _did _get a slight nosebleed as well, not that surprising though.

"W-w-what are you trying to say?!" He demanded frantically, and she tried her best to stifle a giggle at his reaction.

"Well, Tsukune-san," She began standing and walking over to the window and opening it, enjoying the cool morning air, "Kurumu-san, being a succubus, may very well have a bit of pent up lust inside her, since we all know she would rather wait and keep herself for you, her destined one, than let it be released by another man who would only be a pawn to her, and since she hasn't been _able _to do anything," She continued, turning to face him and leaning against a wall, and getting great amusement by the look on his face at where the conversation was going, "So for all we know, she might not be able to _contain _herself when she sees you." It was painfully hard not to laugh at the fluctuations of color his skin was taking, ranging from a deep red of embarrassment, to a deathly pale of white in what she assumed was border-line fear of what Kurumu might do to him once she got her hands on him.

"And don't forget about sweet little Moka-san," She said, enjoying far too much the teasing she was doing to the poor man, "We all know how sweet and innocent she is, but we also know how passionate she is on certain things!" He stood up and gripped the back of a chair tightly, as if for support, "After how long it's been since you've seen each other, she might accidentally get out of hand with expressing her happiness at seeing you again!" She smiled sweetly, but mischievously, at hearing him gulp, and she decided to finish it all off with a bit of a bang, "Just think," She said with a mock gasp of astonishment, as if she had just made a great discovery, to which Tsukune looked at her, fearful curiosity on his face, "What if… just what if… they _both _got their hands on you?!"

At that, he suddenly lost his ability to stand and dropped to the floor with a massive nosebleed, and she heard him mutter "Sweet Jesus…" under his breath.

She couldn't take it anymore, she began laughing out loud, unable to stop herself, until she was gasping for air, then she fell to her knees, still laughing and hugging herself, holding her sides all the while, and she continued to laugh until she was crying and every muscle in her face and abdomen was sore as if she had worked them out for hours and her vision swam from lack of oxygen.

"I-I'm sorry, T-Tsukune-san!" She managed to say between laughing spells, "I-I just couldn't help myself! It was _such _a good opportunity! It would've been a shame to let it pass!"

After lying on the floor for a bit, Tsukune recovered and slowly sat up, groaning a bit, "Ruby-san," He started, "It's fine, but next time please don't go so far that I almost _die_ from a nosebleed? Partially because I don't wanna die, but also because I don't think it would be mourned for a _vampire_ to die of a _nosebleed, _but rather, laughed at instead," She looked at him apologetically, so he hurriedly added, "But I suppose it _would _be a bit funny, in a way." He smiled when he saw her eyes light up as she realized he wasn't upset with her.

"I'm sorry, Tsukune-san," She said, standing and walking over to him and helping him stand up, then pat his chest gently, "I'll keep that in mind next time~."

"Thanks you," He said, chuckling a bit, "Now, if you'll excuse me—"

"Headmaster!" Came a voice from behind the door to his office.

"Someone's here so soon? I wonder what happened this time…" Ruby sighed.

"I don't know, I'm going to go ahead and go see what they need, you stay and do whatever you were hwalking out to the student, and the indignantly surprised expression on her face after being flicked was priceless, laughing as he opened the door, he said "That's for what you did earlier." And he closed the door behind him.

Rubbing her forehead gently, Ruby sighed, "I guess I _did_ kind of deserve it," Then smiled and put a hand to her lips as she blushed slightly, "Though I wish if he was going to _punish _me he would do it more… I don't know… _dominatingly_, maybe?"

- / -

Stepping out into the hallway, still chucking to himself, he looked at the student standing before him, with a worried look in her eyes, and frowned slightly.

"What's wrong?" He asked, "Was there another fight?"

"No, no," She answered, shaking her head vigorously, "It's some girl – we saw her sitting in a tree eating an apple and – " She was cut off by Tsukune, who smiled apologetically.

"Did she have purple hair, pale skin, and blue eyes?" He asked, knowing Mizore was the only person he had ever known to behave like that, except maybe her mother. When the girl nodded, he smiled, "It's fine, she's an old friend of mine, she doesn't pose any threats."

"No, that's not it!" She almost yelled, then, realizing she had almost yelled at her headmaster, she apologized quickly, "It's just that, while she was eating, she just out of nowhere fell out of the tree, unconscious!"

That got Tsukune worried, "Where is she? Go, I'll follow, hurry! Hurry!" He said, already starting to walk, then run ahead of her, and it took all of her ability to keep up, and even then, he had to slow down a bit so he could actually follow her, which he disliked, considering the hurry he was in.

As they ran through the hallways in the school, students who were standing and talking immediately moved as quickly as they could, seeing Tsukune and the student barreling down the hallway.

Finally making it outside the school, the girl led him down a path that led deep into the forest surrounding the academy, and after a bit more running, she stopped and pointed to a tombstone about thirty yards away.

Nodding and telling her to stay, Tsukune quietly walked over to the tombstone and looked around the surrounding trees until he saw a familiar spot of light purple behind one of the trees, and, upon further investigation, it came to be Mizore.

Just as he was about to rush to her side, he saw her shift a bit, then a tired groan.

"Ugh, what the hell happened?" She asked no one, "That's never happened before, am I losing my edge?" He head as she sat herself upright, followed by a quick "Nope." As she laid back down, apparently deciding the grass was more comfortable than sitting; most likely due to soreness.

"Mizore-san?" Tsukune asked, as if he were still looking for her, "Where are you?"

"Ughhhhh… Here… can't a stalker get some rest for a bit?" She asked in return, smiling in a bit of amusement.

"Well, well, well," She heard as Tsukune stepped from behind a tree, "Look who popped up from behind _who _for once?" He said, grinning.

"Me, again." She said lazily.

"How so? You were just taking a snooze from the looks of it!" He exclaimed, and the student waiting a bit of a ways away didn't know what to make of why he was acting so light hearted at a time like this, for she couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could see the smile on his face.

"I don't know," Mizore replied with friendly sarcasm, "I just _did_. Don't question it. Now are you gonna help the damsel in distress up or are you gonna stand there smiling like a smart ass?" She questioned looking up at him and smiling and laughing a bit.

He cocked his head to the side and cupped his chin in his hand and looked at her with a look of extremely deep thought on his face, before replying slowly, "Well, I don't know, I mean I suppose I could, but I'm not so sure after you questioned my chivalry!" He said, acting as if he had been hurt, but unable to hide the amusement in his eyes.

"Awww, come on, help mee pleassee?" She asked, smiling sweetly, and when he sighed and agreed and went to help her stand she gently slapped his hands aside, "Pick me up?" She asked.

"Alright, alright," He said, leaning down and picking her up bridal-style, so that she was cradled in his arms, and began walking back to the school building with her and dismissing the student who guided him, "So what happened to you there?"

"I don't know," Mizore began, frowning, "Maybe I just didn't sleep well and I was still tired or something…" Then she gasped softly and continued, "Or maybe fate had determined I be saved and carried by my hero today?" She asked, giggling softly and nipping at his neck affectionately and nuzzling into him more, causing him to turn a bright red.

"W-well," Tsukune replied, chuckling nervously, unsure of what to say, "I'm glad to have been able to help. How is your back?"

"Sore." She replied simply, "But nothing a bath and massage from you can't fix, right?"

Sputtering and almost tripping, Tsukune's mouth moved but no words came out.

Pouting a bit, she said, "I'm joking, Tsukune, about the bath, but a massage on at least my neck does sound nice, if it isn't too much?" _Though doing both does sound nice,_ she thought with a small sigh.

"We'll see." Tsukune said, stepping up the stairs to the main entrance of the academy, and as he stepped into the school and began making his way through the hallways, he could see the jealous glances from male students towards him over the fact of the beautiful girl in his arms, and in Mizore' case, she could feel the glances from female students towards her over the fact of the arms she was in.

"Some things will apparently never change," Tsukune said, Mizore nodding and grinning a bit in reply, "Doesn't seem like it was long ago I was walking down the halls with you and the others and hearing swears of my death all across the school for being with you all." He said, chuckling and shaking his head.

"Well, that part's changed," She said, "Now I don't think anyone would talk like that about you, but aside from the looks we get, I happen to be very comfortable, and I think if someone took a picture of us like this, we would look rather well together."

Unsure of how exactly to reply, he smiled sheepishly and kept walking with her through the maze of hallways, her perfectly content to sit silent, considering she was resting in his arms, and dangerously close to falling asleep on him, and him content with walking in silence to let her sleep, as well as to avoid saying something idiotic by mistake.

- / -

Massaging her hand to ease the soreness from prolonged writing, Ruby reviewed her list a few times of all the precautions she planned to take with Tsukune's new seals, planning to first use it on the link that had her own blood in it, of course.

_So, then, I've gotten the spells for keeping it from physical damage listed down, as well as a intravenous system, in a sense, for yokai energy for quicker results of power fusions… Next I need some hostile magic blockades and-. _Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door, and, gripping her staff a bit in case it were needed, she called, "Who is it?"

"It's me, Ruby-san," Called the voice of her one and only Tsukune, and she stood up and stretched a bit, "Can you open the door for me? I kind of have my hands full."

"O-oh, yes, sorry, Tsukune-san!" She said, walking quickly over to the door and opening it to see Tsukune cradling a sleeping Mizore in his arms, and she couldn't help but feel jealous of her for a bit, "Welcome back."

"Thanks," Tsukune replied, stepping in and carrying Mizore to the couch and lying her down on it as gently as possible, and, after hearing the door to his office close, he turned to her and sighed, "Somehow she apparently fell from a tree."

Frowning and placing her hands on her hips, Ruby queried, "Mizore-san fell from a tree? Isn't that… I don't know… Out of character for her to do, considering?"

"Yeah," Tsukune answered again, "She said she was still tired while she was sitting there and must not have slept as well as she thought she had, and she just fell."

"I see," Ruby said, looking at Mizore thoughtfully, before moving next to her and placing a hand over her forehead to see if she felt any warmer than usual, "She doesn't feel any warmer than she normally does, and she hasn't looked or acted sick any, so maybe she really just hasn't had enough sleep lately."

"I hope so," Tsukune said, walking over to the door to his room, "I'm going to go on and pack up my stuff before I leave, just let her sleep for a while." He said, stepping into his room and closing the door behind him.

After watching him go into his room, and hearing a small _click_ from his door being locked, Ruby walked into her room and came back out with a blanket and laid it carefully over the sleeping Mizore, and, smiling and petting her head gently, she stood and walked back over to her desk to continue with her list.

- / -

on his way, namely clothes, some packaged food, a couple of blood packs he managed to find after much searching to make sure Ruby was right in saying there were none left at the moment, and, stepping out of his room and back in rather quickly after just enough time to get Moka's rosary, he placed it in his suit case as well.

After he finished packing everything as neatly as he could, taking extra care with the rosary, he closed and locked up the suit case and stepped back out into his office room and sat in his chair and laid his head on his desk.

"So, Ruby-san," Came his voice, somewhat muffled by his sitting with his voice being directed into the wood instead of out into the open air, "What have you came up with for the seals, besides what you've said earlier?"

"Not much," She replied, "All I can come up with is some things to make it easier for the yokai to familiarize and some anti-damage spells."

"Well, I'm sure that would be more than enough as it is," Tsukune said reassuringly, well knowing that she felt as if she should be able to do more for it for him, "After Mizore-san wakes up though, I promised her I'd massage her neck for a bit, then I'll be off." He finished, gulping a bit at the look he got from Ruby after he used "promised," "massage," and "Mizore-san" in the same sentence.

"Well, if all she has to do is fall from a tree to get a massage, maybe I should give it a try." She said in a teasing tone, though she was being serious.

"Or maybe he could make it your new paycheck, 'cause falling from trees isn't exactly the most pleasant thing." Rumbled up a tired voice from the couch, and soon after a purple head of hair popped up over the back of the couch, looking at them both with eyes still heavy from just waking up, "Depending on how well they are, maybe you'll replace old job perks with massages."

Ruby looked over at Tsukune, playing with that idea in her head, and Tsukune began fidgeting a bit, nervously.

massage." And turned around with her back facing him and moved her hair over one of her shoulders to show her full back.

"Uhhhh…" Tsukune began, unsure of what to say, but when she turned to look at him and smiled sweetly, something he never exactly knew her _common_ to do, he sighed and raised his hands in defeat, and looked over to Ruby and shrugged apologetically, and he moved to sit behind Mizore on the couch and began kneading at the base of her neck with the tips of his thumbs, feeling a heat grow up his neck and into his face a bit at the pleased sigh and hint of a moan he earned from her.

While Mizore was currently enjoying herself and Tsukune was feeling a bit nervous, but gradually getting more comfortable, Ruby was feeling a bit jealous of her, so she tapped Tsukune on the shoulder and mouthed that she was going to get breakfast, and quietly walked out of the room.

Turning his attention back to Mizore, he began massaging the sides of her neck and below the base of her skull with the pads of his index fingers and thumbs, and he could almost _feel _the happiness radiating from her at the attention he was giving her, and, happy to be making her enjoy herself, he continued on.

"Mizore-san," Tsukune began, still massaging her neck and shoulders, and when he heard a curious hum, he continued, "After this, I'm going to be going off for a while on a personal trip, and I was wondering if you would mind helping Ruby-san run the school while I'm gone?"

Her curiosity was peaked, and she was about to ask, but then his thumbs hit some sensitive areas on the nape of her neck, and she barely resisted a moan, _Agh, I'll just ask later, this feels way to damn good,_ so she replied with a simple "mhm," then stood a bit and moved to sit on his lap, situated directly over his crotch, and she swore she felt the heat flaring from Tsukune's face against her back.

"M-Mizore-san! What are you doing!?" He asked frantically, about to move her off of him, but realized shortly after the only way to get her off would be to _throw _her off.

"I'm just making sure that I get massaged well before you leave, this way you can't just up and leave," She said, and blushed a good bit at the feeling she got shortly after of his hardened self being pressed against her rear, and she giggled mischievously, "Don't act like you don't enjoy this, Tsukune, I already know you do." She said, teasingly rubbing her butt against his member through his pants and earning a surprised and choked groan from him, which lit up a heat throughout her body, which, for both their sakes if Ruby came back, she ignored, and simply sat all of her weight onto him, causing him to groan again.

"A-Alright, fine." Tsukune answered, and continued massaging her neck and shoulders, trying to ignore the soft body pressed against him, which, he had to admit, did feel rather nice.

Smiling and leaning against him, while still taking gracious note of the feeling against her and enjoying it greatly, she closed her eyes and relaxed as he continued to massage her neck and shoulders, grateful for both the attention as well as something to make her fantasizing later more accurate and pleasurable.

After a bit longer, she turned to face him and cuddled against him, "Thanks, Tsukune, that was great."

"Y-you're welcome, Mizore-san." He replied, hugging her around her waist, and finally feeling himself ease down a bit, he could sit more comfortably with her than before, in a non-perverse sense, at least.

At that moment, Ruby came back into the room and went from a satisfied expression, most likely from her breakfast, to envy and a bit of disappointment that she wasn't in Mizore's current position, but she recovered quickly and, to keep from having to see them on the couch any longer, hurried over to her desk where she had laced a gold chain through the chain link with her blood in it to make it a necklace, and picked it up.

"Tsukune-san," she said, holding it up so that he could see it, "Weren't you in a hurry to go?" She hated knowing she wouldn't see him for a bit, but she hated seeing the position he and Mizore were in, cuddling on the couch, even more.

"O-oh, yeah," Tsukune said, carefully moving Mizore off of him and, standing up, he picked up his suitcase and walked over to Ruby, who put the necklace around his neck and stuck her tongue out at Mizore a bit.

"So, Ruby-san, why do I need the link now?" He asked curiously.

"Well," She answered, " I've gotten the spells on it now, and I was wanting to see how it worked out as soon as possible so I'll know if I need to fix anything or not, plus, it can help start getting some of the yokai familiarized."

Mizore had no idea what was going on, but she didn't particularly want to have an explanation at the moment, so she just watched.

"I see, well, thanks again, Ruby-san," Tsukune said, smiling gratefully and walking to the door, then he turned, "Thanks for agreeing to help, Mizore-san, I'll see you both soon! Be careful!"

And, as they watched him close the door, they sighed and flopped down on the nearest couch or chair, trying to think of what they could do while he was gone to keep from going insane from both boredom and missing him, and running the school probably wouldn't do much to help either of them.

- / -

Walking through the halls, trying to take the least crowded ones possible, Tsukune was making haste with trying to get out to the bus stop he had been at countless times before, but then, as always, came an interruption in his plans.

"Headmaster!" Came a small voice from behind him, then, before he could turn to acknowledge them, came the voice again, a bit more shyly this time, "Tsukune-kun!"

"Yes?" He said, turning to see Seras running behind him to catch up, "Oh, hey, Seras-san!" He said, smiling at the student, "Did you need something?"

"N-no, not really," She answered, stopping beside him and leaning against a wall momentarily to catch her breath, "I just saw you walking down the halls in such a hurry with your suitcase and I was wondering if something was wrong?"

"Ahh, I see," He said, turning and starting to walk again and motioning for her to come with him, "I was just heading out to see and old friend."

Hurrying to catch pace with him, she continually glanced up at him, a bit awed that he had no problem with her interfering with his leaving like she thought she was, slowing him down, "Oh, sounds fun, what about running the school?"

"I'm leaving that to Ruby-san and Mizore-san for a bit," He replied, "But, if it isn't too much, could you and your sister help them out some if they need it? Any absences or lateness to classes I'll personally excuse when I get back."

"Oh! It's not a problem at all! I'll help, and I'll talk to Ria about it as well." She said cheerfully, and smiled and blushed a bit when he smiled and patted her head gently afterwards.

"Good," He said, "I had the feeling I could count on you."

"A-Anytime!" She replied.

"So, Seras-san," Tsukune said as they approached the main entrance and exit doors to and from the school, "Where is Ria-san?"

"Oh, she went on ahead to class," Seras replied, "She said that she would tell the teacher that you wanted me to help you with something, so I'll be late – " She clasped her hands to her mouth, realizing that she had just confessed to the headmaster that her and her sister were being untruthful to a teacher.

Looking down at her and opening the door, he motioned her out and stepped outside after she did, "Well, we can't have you being _entirely_ untruthful, now can we?" After she cautiously shook her head "no" he continued, "How about this, I'll excuse this if you'll accompany me to the bus stop, I'd like to get to know some of the students better, anyhow, I'll count our chatting today as helping me."

"O-Okay! Thank you, so much!" She replied, the gratitude and relief clear on her face.

"Well, let's get going." He said, chuckling and walking down the stairs with her and beginning the walk through the woods to the bus stop.

"So…" Seras began, a bit awkwardly, "Who's the friend you said you were going to see?"

Looking at her and smiling, he replied, "Moka Akashiya-san; you remind me of her a bit, if I'm honest."

Her mind quickly flicked back to a picture she had seen in an old article of the Newspaper Club that Tsukune participated in and recalled a beautiful girl with pink hair and deep, green eyes, "By which you mean.?" She asked, a bit surprised that she reminded him of her.

"Well," He said thoughtfully, "So far, you seem like her in being kind, friendly, and a bit shy at times, and you've both already helped me out a lot already."

Still a bit surprised that he thought her to be similar at all to Moka, she searched her mind for something to say until the last comment he made came to mind, "How have we both helped you?"

"With you, the huge hole in my stomach, with Moka-san, she's brought me back to life, and, even as her sealed, weaker state, before she disappeared, she fought and risked her life just to save mine."

"Oh, I see…" Seras said, hugging herself lightly and looking down at the ground, unsure of what exactly to say besides, "Thank you, it's really flattering that you can compare me to her."

"You're welcome," Tsukune replied, scratching the back of his head, "Right now it seems almost like I'm meeting her all over again, except without a bike in my back."

Unsure of what he means she simply kept walking and smiled, "Well, I hope you have a nice time visiting her."

Coming out of the woods and stepping up to the sign at the bus stop, Tsukune turned to face her and leaned against the tree overlooking the cliff.

"Seras-san," Tsukune said, seeing the bus coming from the tunnel, "You can go on back to class now, I appreciate your company."

"Y-you're welcome!" She said, blushing and smiling, "Well, bye! I hope you enjoy yourself!" And, after a smile and nod from Tsukune, she turned and started running back to the academy, infinitely surprised and glad that she had actually spent _any _time alone with him, and glad that she made him enjoy himself.

Turning and stepping to the exit of the tunnel, and onto the bus he had been on so many times before, he smiled at the thought of seeing Moka again soon, and, for once, had a silent ride with the bus driver.

- / -

As Tsukune was stepping off the bus, the bus driver noticed the link on Tsukune's necklace and grinned.

"Hey, kid," he started, and his grin widened when Tsukune turned to face him, "That's a nice piece of jewelry you've got there."

Looking down and noticing what he was talking about, Tsukune gripped it a bit and looked back up to the bus driver's ever-eerie stare, "Thanks." He replied simply.

Chuckling deeply and knowingly, he turned in his seat to fully face Tsukune, "Me and Mikogami always knew you'd do some great things, but we didn't expect _this _kind of thing to start so soon. You have a long, hard road ahead of you, kid, good luck. I'll help you out now and then if I can and if I need to, but just be ready for some pain."

At Tsukune's questioning look, he simply said "You'll figure it out as you go." And closed the door after Tsukune stepped out of the bus completely, and shortly after he was driving away to God knows where.

"He never fails to creep me out, even now." Tsukune said to himself, turning to look up the bit of a walk up the mountain to Castle Shuzen.

"I hope you're ready and willing to see me again, Moka-san." Tsukune said, smiling at the thought of seeing her again.

- / -

Sorry it took me a bit longer to get this chapter out than I had thought and than I had told some people it would probably take; I'm currently in the middle of doing a career research project for school and it's been interfering with this a bit, but, here is chapter four, I can only hope you enjoy it and will forgive my lateness, as well as any other lateness with future chapters.

As usual, reviews are welcome, let me know what you think, as well as possible plot points YOU would have interest in happening. Message me the plot point ideas you have and I'll consider and possibly work them in somehow or another.


	5. Chapter 5

_New Beginnings_

_Chapter Five: Rekindling a Flame (Cont.)_

_As usual, I don't own any of R+V nor profit from it, and I don't profit from writing this fanfiction, either_

- / -

"_Well, Moka-san, I hope you're ready and willing to see me again."_

- / -

"Geez, these are some steep hills," Tsukune said, leaning against a tree, "Vampire stamina be damned by these hills."

He had currently been walking for about two and a half hours, a few times getting off track by accidentally taking a wrong path way up the mountains, and often times gotten careless with his steps and tripping up on some loose rocks, so he had decided to sit down for a minute and develop a new plan of attack on the damned hills.

"Well," He said, standing up and stretching, "I guess I'll just stay straight on this path and see if I have any better luck." With that, he began his walk again.

- / -

"Oh, right, Ruby," Mizore said, sitting up in her chair, "I forgot to ask Tsukune before he left, where is he going?"

"He said he was going to see Moka-san and Kurumu-sa – " She replied, but realized her mistake of telling Mizore where he was going for sure too late.

"He's going_ where?"_ Mizore asked, glaring at her, "You let him go and see Moka and Kurmu by _himself?"_

Ruby gulped nervously and nodded carefully, "Y-yes."

"_Ruby_," Mizore sighed exaggeratedly, "You _know _that Moka's probably going to kick him through a _wall _without us there to talk her out of it for not coming to see her, and god only – " She paused, "Well, actually, only _Kurumu_ knows what Kurumu will do to Tsukune, and who knows what Kokoa or Moka's father will do if they're there with Moka and see him."

Thinking for a moment, Ruby looked at Mizore apologetically, "Sorry, Mizore-san, I didn't really think that through; I'm sure he's going to be fine though, he's a grown man, and a powerful one at that, after all. Don't worry."

Mizore simply huffed indignantly before shrugging, deciding Ruby was right, and walking over to her desk.

"By the way, Mizore-san, I need your help on something."

"What is it?" Mizore asked, cocking her head to the side a bit.

"Well, you saw the chain link on Tsukune-san's necklace, right?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, we're working on a new seal for him."

Feeling a bit worried, Mizore's eyes widened a bit, "Why!? You saw what almost happened to him with the _last _seal he had!"

"Yes, yes, I know," Ruby said, motioning Mizore to sit and calm down, "We considered that, and this seal isn't a seal to restrict his powers, its meant to make them more versatile."

"Oh…. 'kay…." Mizore said, sitting down and looking up at the older woman, still concerned, "So what did you have in mind?"

"We're making seals with the blood of different yokai in the chain links," And, at the confusion on Mizore's face, she continued, "We're trying to get his yokai to familiarize with other yokai so he can use them as well, and I've already placed some spells for safety on the chain link he has with him, and I'll continue to do so on the rest."

"Why do you want to do that?" Mizore asked further, still not entirely sure of what their planned goal was.

"Basically, he wants to pursue the original plan that we all kind of had and that Moka-san's mother had, to shape a world where all races coexist peacefully; he wants to become a beacon of that idea."

Realization lit up on Mizore's face, and she smiled, not surprised at all that Tsukune would be one to think of something like that.

"I see," She said, a hint of anticipation in her voice, "And I take it that by you need my help, right now you mean?"

"Yeah, I need a bit of your blood, not a lot, though." Ruby said, smiling with Mizore

"Well, let's get on with it!" Mizore said, conjuring up an ice kunai and walking over to a small cup on Ruby's desk and cutting the palm of her hand open a bit and letting her hand bleed out into the small cup until it had about a quarter of a teaspoon of blood in it.

"Mizore-san, I only needed a little bit, though?"

"It's better to have a little more than a little less than you need and me have to cut again, right?" She said, turning her head to look at Ruby while she wrapped her hand in some bandages she found in a drawer of Ruby's desk.

"I suppose you're right," Ruby said, hugging Mizore gratefully, "Thanks for helping."

"Don't worry, it's for Tsukune, right? I don't mind as long as it's for him."

"I'm sure we all feel that way, Mizore-san," Ruby said, smiling and walking to the doorway out of the office, "Now, I've got to run a few errands, would you like to come?"

"Sure," Mizore replied, walking over to Ruby and opening the door and stepping out, "I've got nothing better to do, plus it's been a while since we've talked much without stressfulness."

"You're right," Ruby said, stepping out and locking the door and closing it, "Well, let's go then?"

And, after a nod of agreement from Mizore, who was currently in the process of replacing her current lollipop with another, they began walking down the halls to do what errands Ruby had.

- / -

_Finally, _Tsukune thought, _Only another one or two miles to Castle Shuzen, from the looks of it!_

"And I'm on a flat stretch now, to boot! Maybe karma is finally getting on my side a bit." He said, strolling down the path and around the occasional bend and curve, and taking an enjoyment in watching birds or butterflied fly past, or watching small critters scurrying across the path.

"This place is _so _much more lively than back at Yokai Academy, more eye-pleasing, in my opinion." He said to himself, continuing his walk until he came upon a wide clearing that the path led to with rose bushes scattered across the clearing's edge, ironically, most of them were dead.

"It's such a pity," He said, frowning, "Along such a life-filled mountain path, there's, of course, one section that's just _got _to be dead." Sighing and walking over to one of the bushes, he put a hand under one of the wilted flower blooms and frowned a bit, thinking of how beautiful it would be, were it full of life like it should be.

He was abundantly surprised that, soon after, he felt the flower twitch, and a few seconds later, it slowly began to bleed from the dark red, almost black, that the petals were into a shade of crimson, and then, even slower than that, the petals began to fill back out from their dead state; they slowly changed from being dried and wrinkled like an old piece of parchment paper to a full, soft feeling that is normal for a flower petal.

"Whoa," He said, shocked, "Did _I _do that?"

To experiment that idea, he reached out and placed a hand on the stem of the flower and concentrated a bit of his yokai towards it experimentally, and was both elated and surprised when he found that the stem turned from a dry brown to a deep green.

Smiling and standing, he picked the rose and a bit of the stem off from the rest of the bush, and went to each of the other rose bushes, attempting and, after a few tries here and there, managing to revive enough roses to have a dozen of roses, assorted with an array of shades of pink and red.

"I suppose Ruby-san's yokai intravenous works," He said, feeling a good bit prideful in his feat, "I'll have to tell her about it when I'm back at Yokai." He continued, beginning to walk down the path again, carefully cutting off the thorns with a small pocket knife he had found on the bus.

- / -

"It's been an hour and a half of walking papers back and forth between two empty rooms, yayyy." A bored Mizore said.

"Well, Mizore-san, you can go if you want, I'm almost done with the papers." Ruby replied, rounding a corner with a stack of papers and a box of pens and what not in her arms.

Rounding the corner, she heard a small "Eep!" and a second later, she had tripped and fell, the pens and papers scattering everywhere.

"Hey, watch where you're going, you idiot!" Mizore yelled at the other girl who was just turning back to face them.

"I-I-I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Came a voice she thought she had heard before, and, after the girl had completely turned around, she found that it was Seras, "Oh! Ruby-san! Mizore-san! I'm so sorry, let me help you with that!" She said hurriedly, frantically gathering the loose papers and pens and stacking them back up together.

"It's okay, Seras-san," Ruby said soothingly, putting a hand on her shoulder and kneeling next to her to help her finish getting up the rest of the papers, "But why were you in such a hurry? "

"O-oh, well, I was trying to catch up with Ria-neechan heading to her next class, I'm caught up and then some in my class, so I thought I'd sit with her in her class for a bit." She replied.

"You've gotta be a hell of a student if your teacher will let you do that." Mizore said, leaning against a wall.

"Uhm, I guess so, thank you…" Seras said shyly, unsure of how to reply, and instantly felt like an idiot when Mizore rolled her eyes.

"Loosen up a little, won't you? We can't ever decide if you're trustworthy or not if you always act like we're evaluating you!" Mizore stated bluntly, ignoring the look from Ruby that was trying to tell _her_ to loosen up a bit and stop putting the poor girl on the spot.

"O-okay, I'm sorry!" Seras said quickly, standing up.

Ruby, standing up, stepped forward to Seras and handed her the stack of papers and the box of supplies, "Could you do me a favor and run these to the newspaper club's old room? It isn't used by students anymore, so a couple of other staff members and I use it as a bit of a storage room."

"Yes, Ruby-san! O-of course! But what about – "

"Don't worry," Ruby said, smiling sweetly, "We'll let Ria-san know where you are, get along now so you can get to her sooner, okay?"

"Okay! Thank you! Again, I'm sorry!" Seras said, walking down the hallway the opposite way she had come, towards the old newspaper club room.

"Mizore-san," Ruby said, turning to look at her, "Please don't pressure the poor students so much?"

"Well, someone had to tell her," Mizore answered her, shrugging, "I don't really trust her yet, despite her helping Tsukune; we've had people help him then back stab him before. I just want to make sure she's trustworthy."

"I feel the same way, Mizore-san, but don't do it by disrespecting her, just watch how she and her sister act," She started walking down the hall they had come down earlier to set on a look for Ria, "And see if Tsukune-san trusts her, if he does, then maybe we should, too."

"Yeah, and that's what we thought about Hokuto, but he ended up being a part of Antithesis, and later, Fairy Tale." Mizore retorted.

She was right, and Ruby knew it, but she wasn't ready to just completely distrust Seras and Ria yet, especially considering that Seras had helped Tsukune with a problem that she had no idea of and that could have caused him troubles later in his life, but, to avoid a conflict, she simply agreed that Mizore had a point and they continued walking in silence until they found the girl they were looking for.

"Ria-san!" Ruby called, and quickened her pace to catch up with the girl who had just gone past a corner, "Ria-san?"

Hearing her the second time, she sighed and turned, not knowing who it was.

"Yeah, yeah, what is it?" She said, then, seeing it was Ruby, "Oh, Ruby-san, Mizore-san, right? Sorry, I didn't know it was you."

"It's okay," Ruby said, walking up to her, "We just saw Seras-san heading this way, but I had her run a quick errand for me; she said that when she's done she's going to go to your class and sit with you."

"Oh, okay, thanks for letting me know," Ria said, "I'll be sure to save a seat for her, but I have to hurry now, so, sorry for not being able to stay and chat, maybe another time."

"Yeah, hopefully!" Ruby said, and began turning and walking away with Mizore, but was stopped shortly after by Ria's voice.

"I know you two don't trust us yet, and I don't blame you, considering you don't know us."

Ruby and Mizore said nothing, nor did they turn to face her.

"But, if you need anything, let us know. I'm sure we'd have some fun with each other once we get more acquainted." And shortly after, Mizore and Ruby heard the clicking of hard-soled shoes on the tile floors as she walked away.

"Well, Ruby," Mizore said as they walked down the hall together, "At least she's taken some initiative in it?"

"Yeah," Ruby agreed, "But something about her makes her seem dangerous, but also friendly at the same time."

"We'll just have to wait and see, then."

- / -

"How hard can it _possibly _be to find _one _room!?" Seras muttered to herself in agitation.

She had spent the past twenty minutes trying to find the old Newspaper Club room, and deeply regretted forgetting to ask for definite directions to the room.

"They should _really_ put up some signs with directions on them here and there throughout the school," She groaned, "I might talk to Tsukune-san about it next time I see him." She said, smiling, her mood suddenly made better by remembering the bit of that morning she had spent talking to Tsukune.

She was still immensely surprised, though, at how plainly friendly he was to everyone around him from the start.

"I'm glad _he's_ the headmaster, instead of that creepy Mikogami-san I've heard people whispering about."

After a bit more wandering around, she almost squealed in delight when she saw a sign over a door whose writing was a bit faded, but read "Newspaper Club Room".

Running as quickly as she could to the room, she turned the doorknob and stepped inside, grateful that it was unlocked, and set the supplies down on a table.

"Now I can finally get to Ria-neechan's class!" She said happily, closing the door to the room and walking over and opening a window, stepping out, and closing the window behind her before jumping and sprouting beautiful white, feathery wings and flying as fast as she could to the building of the school where her sister was having class.

- / -

"Now what is there, Ruby?" Mizore asked, walking close behind her, "And what do you mean the Newspaper Club room is a supply room now?"

"Well, I still need to go and check the status of the blood packs we ordered a while back and see if they've been able to be shipped out yet," She said, and received a somewhat apathetic "Ah," from Mizore, "and as for the Newspaper Club room, not long after all of you graduated and Tsukune-san took over as Yokai's headmaster, it's generally been rather boring, and any exciting news spread faster through gossip than the Newspaper Club could keep up with, and plus, a lot of people would rather believe magnificent gossips from their friends than cold, hard facts on a piece of paper. They think it's just as boring to read a newspaper as it is to sit in class, so, gradually, the Newspaper club finally faded away."

"I see," Mizore replied, sighing, "We had some good times in that club, I hate to see it not being around anymore."

"Yeah, I know," Ruby agreed sadly, "The last "successful" Newspaper Club was ours, the year after Gin-san graduated. After that, though, Kokoa-san lost most interest in the club because of all the new kids she didn't know and, of course, disliked, so she went to the Martial Arts club, and the other kids spread out to clubs they thought were more exciting."

"Well, yeah, but you and Tsukune were still here, so what happened there?" Mizore queried.

"Well, we tried to keep the club running as long as we could," Ruby answered, "But Ms. Nekonome-sensei was busy tutoring students more often than normal, and off doing whatever else she normally did, so she didn't have time to help, and, with all the work piled on Tsukune-san, as well as myself, it became hard to run the club with just two people, so, we finally had to let it go. It had a good run, might as well have been the empire of the school, but, as with all the greatest empires, it finally had its decline."

"I guess," Mizore replied glumly, "I still think it's bullshit that the newspaper club was the one to fade away when there are still cheap, _pointless _clubs running around like the haunted house club; they've never really had any accomplishments, and there are a lot of other clubs that are more entertaining and worth-while."

"Everyone has their own opinions, Mizore-san," Ruby said quietly, "But I do agree with you. We're just letting what happens happen, as long as it keeps the school as peaceful as possible."

"So, you and Tsukune have turned into a couple of hippies?" Mizore said with friendly sarcasm, nudging Ruby in the side with her elbow a bit, "If that's the case, when Tsukune gets back we should all roll up a few!"

"Mizore-san, that sounds great!" Ruby said, laughing, "I'll do that as soon as I decide to become stupid."

"Pfft, no balls." Mizore said, trying not to laugh.

"I should hope not!" Ruby said, a hint of mock hurt in her voice.

"God I've missed all of y'all. I really want to see the others soon, too."

"Me too, Mizore-san," Ruby said, smiling, "Hopefully we'll see the rest again soon."

- / -

_What's taking her so long? _Ria wondered, laying her head down on her desk and closing her eyes, _This class is _so _boring, it'd be nice to have her here right now._

As if on cue with that thought, a knock on the door came, and her teacher opened the door to see Seras standing in the doorway catching her breath.

"H-Hi!" Seras started, "I've gotten everything in my class done and then some, and I have my teacher's permission, so I came to sit with Ria-neechan, if that's okay."

"Well, you're supposed to still be in your class, though," The teacher said, frowning, "How do I know you aren't just saying that you have permission just to get out of class?"

"I – " She began, before being cut off.

"I talked to the headmaster's assistant this morning," Ria said, standing, "She told me about this, and there's no way she would go along with it unless she was telling the truth, considering her position, right?"

"Rianne-san, please sit down," The teacher said, turning to face her, "This is a conversation between your sister and I."

"Yes," Ria admitted, "But I'm giving a valid point, and, considering arguing with people isn't worth my time in most cases, why would I make something up to start an argument with you?"

"Rianne-san, I'm only going to tell you one more time, sit down." The teacher said, a strong hint of agitation in her voice.

Ria began to open her mouth to say something again, but Seras hurried and spoke up before she could.

"I have a note!" She said sheepishly, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a small piece of paper and handing it to the teacher.

The teacher's eyes narrowed as she read over the note, then nodded and rolled her eyes a bit and motioned her to come in.

"Just don't caue a ruckus." She said, closing the door behind Seras as she stepped in.

Walking over and sitting next to Ria, Seras looked at her with a little agitation in her eyes.

"Ria-neechan, I _can _talk for myself!" She whispered intensely, "We're in our last year of school before we go out more or less on our own, can't I speak for myself sometimes?"

"Yes, you _can_," Ria whispered back, "But generally you get nervous and doubt yourself so I _have _to speak up for you, and it's become second nature!"

"Well, please, let me try speaking for myself now and again." She said, looking at Ria apologetically.

"Fine, I'll try, I'm sorry for not giving you more chances." Ria replied, frowning a bit and hugging her sister.

The rest of the class was spent talking about Seras's time talking to Tsukune that morning, discussing how Ruby and Mizore didn't exactly trust them, and occasionally taking notes from what the teacher was writing for the two sisters.

- / -

"Another one or two miles my _ass_," Tsukune said exaggeratedly, finding it a bit humorous, how he had been cursing a bit that day when he normally didn't unless extremely angered or agitated, "But I finally made it." He said, preparing to take the last couple of steps until he entered a gateway that opened up to a small path leading to the door of Castle Shuzen.

But, of course, something else was bound to get in his way.

"Who goes there?" Came a deep voice from behind a wall, and, shortly after, a tall man stepped forward, eyes shining a deep crimson, staring him down coldly and calculatingly, "And what business do you have here?"

Stepping closer and bowing respectively, Tsukune looked the man in the eye and smiled in a friendly way, "I'm Tsukune Aono, an old friend of Moka Akashiya-san's, and I've come to visit her."

"Visitations for her have never happened before," The man said, narrowing his eyes at him, and, now that Tsukune was closer, taking better note at the pair of eyes that were trademark to a vampire set inside Tsukune's head, "How do we know you aren't an enemy, or someone who has come to kidnap or assassinate Miss Akashiya?"

"If you don't believe me," Tsukune said, "Why don't you have another guard tell her I'm here while you stay and keep an eye on me?"

Looking him up and down thoughtfully, the man raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and, shortly after, another man, this one a bit shorter, came from a small building on the side of the wall closest to the castle.

"Go and tell Miss Akashiya that a man named Tsukune Aono is here to see her, if she recognizes him to be friendly, let her come as she pleases, if not, then we will have this man leave."

"Yes, sir." The shorter said before turning and walking briskly into the castle.

"So," Tsukune piped up, returning the other man's attention back to him, "May I ask what your name is?"

"Not that it is necessary for _you _to know," The man said smugly, "But I am Raiser Cross, leader of the Castle Shuzen's royal guard."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Cross-san." Tsukune said calmly, ignoring the other man's obvious egotistical manner.

"Yes, and depending on how this goes, the same may be said for you." Raiser replied.

The two then stood in silence, until the doors to the castle burst open and two figures showed up in the doorway, one of which being Moka Akashiya.

"Sir, she must know him well enough, because as soon as I mentioned him being outside she bolted down the main hall to here." The shorter said, walking up to Raiser.

"I see," He answered, turning to Tsukune and beckoning him forward, "Come on, Aono-kun."

And, together, the three began walking down the pathway to Moka, Tsukune walking with his hands behind his back, keeping the roses he had collected somewhat concealed.

"Moka-san." Tsukune said, smiling.

"Tsukune," She replied, smiling and beginning to take a step forward with her mouth open to say something else, but she was cut off when another man stepped from the doorway next to her and placed an arm around her waist and held her against him.

In a mocking tone of Moka's use of Tsukune's name without honorifics and eyeing him as if he were a lesser being meant only for amusing him, came "Hello, _Tsukune."_

- / -

Well, there's chapter five! I know it's a bit shorter than the past couple of chapters have been, but I wanted to end it on that note, and I couldn't really go much anywhere else with Ruby and Mizore checking on blood packs, and I don't think any of us wanted to sit and read any more on Ria and Seras having a conversation. I hope you enjoyed what there was in this chapter, and I'll try to have chapter six out as soon as possible.


	6. Chapter 6

_New Beginnings_

_Chapter Six: Rekindling the Flame (Final)_

_As usual, I don't own any of R+V, I don't profit from this, and please don't copy my stuff? Thanks._

- / -

"_Hello, __**Tsukune."**_

- / -

Tsukune wasn't exactly sure of what to think of the sight in front of him

_Are they… together? _He thought in dismay, his skin turning a strange pale, even for a vampire, as his mouth dried up and he felt a dull ache in his heart, _Have I really been out of her life this long?_

"Hi, Tsukune," Moka said, a bit of nervousness in her voice, "It's… been a while."

After standing and trying to kick start his mind with something to say, he shook his head a bit and regained his posture, straightening his back more and squaring his shoulders a bit.

"Yeah," He answered, "It has. May I ask who this gentleman is?" He asked, indicating the man next to her, who smiled smugly at him.

As she was about to reply, she was cut off by the man, "I am Adolfo Shaizukona," the man said, "And I am Moka's fiancé."

Any light in Tsukune's eyes died at that, _So, I was right,_ he thought sadly.

"I see." Tsukune replied, his voice now noticeably hollow and, more or less, sounding as if it were coming from someone who had lost any sight of purpose.

As Moka stood next to Adolfo, she felt sick at the way Tsukune's voice sounded, as well as the obvious heart-brokenness in his eyes, it stabbed a jagged lance through her heart, seeing the man she had loved all throughout her time in high school, and even after that, in the position he was in.

She wanted so badly to go to him and tell him the truth of the matter, but with Adolfo holding her, she couldn't go anywhere without him trying to prevent her, and that would definitely lead to conflict between him and her, him and Tsukune, or, most likely, between Adolfo and _both _Tsukune and her.

"What's wrong, Tsukune-kun?" Adolfo questioned, a look of mock empathy on his face, but a glint of amusement in his eyes, "Were you thinking that you were just going to come to see her after god knows how long, and everything go straight back to normal and live happily ever after with her?"

That was, of course, the final end result Tsukune had hoped for, but he hadn't expected to be able to make amends as soon as he saw her, but, even more so, he hadn't expected her to be _engaged._

"No," Tsukune said through grit teeth, "I had been hoping that I could at least _try _and make amends with her, and, if she wanted, we could work from there."

Moka closed her eyes and hung her head down a bit, which didn't go unnoticed by the man with his arm around her.

"Don't you see, Tsukune-kun?" He asked, pointing at her, "She doesn't _want_ you here!" He continued, proceeding to point at Tsukune with a disgusted look on his face, "You _abandoned _her for, from what I've heard, a piece of shit school, am I wrong?"

"Please, don't talk about Yokai Academy like that." Moka piped up quietly.

"What was that?" Adolfo asked, glaring down at her.

Looking up and over to Tsukune, then back at Adolfo, she repeated, "I said please don't talk about Yokai academy like that… That place saved my life, it's where I met all the friends I've held dear for so long."

Adolfo smiled and laughed off what she had just said, "Fine, fine," he complied, however, then continued, "But what of this man in front of us? Should we ask him to leave now? I mean, he _did _just abandon you for some school filled with people he didn't know, and not _once _before now has he tried to contact you."

"I didn't abandon her!" Tsukune cried, his throat tightening up on him a bit, worrying more than anything that Moka might hate him now, or be persuaded to by her apparent fiancé.

"Then what do you call it?!" Adolfo called back, "You left her alone from all the _dear friends_ of hers back at that damned school, and now you want to try and get her back, and you're simply _jealous_ of me," He said, turning Moka away from Tsukune to face him, "Yes, that's it, isn't it? You're jealous that her father has agreed to our marriage," he knew how badly he was hurting Tsukune, and he didn't really care about Moka's feelings, so he was enjoying playing with the younger man's mind a bit, and he started trailing his hands lower and lower down Moka's back until they were just above her rear, "You're jealous that _I _can do this and _you can't_." He finished, smiling and kissing Moka on her lips and ignoring the sound of shock and unwillingness that came from her, and enjoying the look on Tsukune's face as it happened in front of him.

Just to prod a bit more at Tsukune, Adolofo reached down more so that his hands were on Moka's rear and squeezed it firmly, getting a sick pleasure from the look of shock on Tsukune's face, and the anger flaring in his eyes.

"Adolfo-san," Tsukune said, taking a step forward, "I can deal with you insulting me," he continued walking, and Adolfo stepped away and to the side of Moka, carelessly pushing her out of his way, "And I can deal with you insulting my school, and I will admit that I should have _made _time to come here before now."

Adolfo grinned evilly, _I guess I finally hit a nerve,_ he thought, and looking over to Moka, he saw the anger and embarrassment obvious on her face, _It's a good thing my family is rich and I convinced Issa to make her be a good girl, _he thought, turning back to Tsukune who was still walking closer.

"Guards," Adolfo said, "Get him."

As soon as those words were said, the two guards outside, Raiser, and the Shorter man, were lunging towards Tsukune.

The first punch, thrown by the shorter, was easily dodged by Tsukune and followed up with Tsukune kicking him in the face, sending him flying at bullet speed into one of the castle's walls, and, shortly after, Raiser was on him, punching and kicking vigorously at Tsukune, who was parrying and dodging all that he could, until Raiser finally landed a punch on his jaw that send him about twenty yards to the side.

"Tsukune!" Moka screamed, about to go check on him, but Adolfo grabbed her wrist.

"Now, now, Moka," He said, "Let's not overreact."

Closing her eyes and sighing, wanting so desperately to go to Tsukune, but knowing she would regret disobeying her father, she stopped and simply stood still, eyeing Tsukune lying on the ground and hoping to high heavens that he was alright.

After a bit, Tsukune slowly stood back up, looking over to Raiser and Adolfo, as well as the shorter vampire who had recovered from the kick Tsukune had landed, but with a bloody face.

"Is that it?" Tsukune asked, standing fully up, "I had expected more from the Shuzen Royal Guard."

Scowling at the insult, Raiser launched himself at Tsukune with all his might, preparing to send a rib-cracking knee into him.

His plan was short lived, however, as just before his knee collided with Tsukune's ribcage, Tsukune caught his knee, sliding back a few feet from the impact, and delivered a swift punch to the side of his knee, causing Raiser to scream in pain, accompanied by a sickening _crack_ and his leg now being bent at an impossible angle.

"I'm sorry, Raiser-san," Tsukune said, a tone of apathy in his voice, "But you've brought it on yourself." He finished, back-handing Raiser and sending him into a small, wooded area off to the side, followed by the sound of several trees cracking.

The shorter guard was now standing in a bit of fear of Tsukune, for he knew he was weaker than Raiser and he had just _seen _how easily the young man had dealt with him.

"S-Should I get reinforcements, sir?" He asked, looking up at Adolfo, who shook his head, smiling.

"No, you will be fine enough." He said, shoving the shorter man towards Tsukune.

Involuntarily screeching for a short moment in an indignant way from the sudden action and movement, the vampire bounced and rolled across the ground until he was at Tsukune's feet.

"N-No! Please! Have mercy on me!" He wailed, scrambling to his feet.

Tsukune looked at him for a moment before shrugging, "You were the first to attack me," He said, "So, why?"

Seeing no way out, and unsure of if any attempt at negotiation would have any effect at all, he stood quickly and went to send a quick punch to Tsukune's throat.

Catching his fist with ease, Tsukune sighed, "I had a feeling you were bluffing about wanting mercy." He said, before squeezing the man's fist until bones in his hand cracked, and elbowing him in the temple and heard a dazed grunt of pain from the man before he dropped, unconscious.

"Moka-san, I think your father may want to employ better guards." He said, looking over at Moka.

Moka could only nod, with her mouth hanging open a bit and her eyes widened.

She had seen Tsukune fight other vampires before; there had been her step mother and Alucard, but they had been rather long fight for Tsukune, and she had thought that the vampires her father had employed would be comparably strong to them in their own rights, considering her father had told her that he hired "the most elite in the area of vampires as guards".

But seeing how easily he fended off both vampires, despite having Shinso blood that's been awakened before in his veins, she was still amazed by the display she had just seen and couldn't help but wonder if he had spent his time training the last few years or if he somehow hit a growth spurt with his yokai.

"Bravo, bravo," Adolfo said, clapping his hands with an eyebrow cocked slightly, "I didn't quite expect that, now, I believe you have earned the privilege to continue your previous thought."

Tsukune smirked a bit and began walking towards Moka and Adolfo.

"I said I can deal with you insulting me, and I can manage with you insulting my school, though I don't like it," He stopped walking once he was but a foot away from Adolofo and looked him in the eye, "But I do _not _tolerate you insulting my friends or making such lewd advanced on those I hold dear, especially Moka-san."

Moka looked up at his face, it was rigid with determination and primitive, blinding anger flared in his eyes, and she could tell from how rigid his body was that it was taking every ounce of his willpower not to just snap on Adolfo at that moment.

"Oh?" Adolfo said, "And, pray tell, exactly _what_ you plan to do to those who _do _have the nerve to do such things?"

"I prefer to think on the spot rather than make a plan." Tsukune said bluntly, as if he would tell someone he was about to fight what he was going to do, if Adolfo thought he was that stupid, he had something else coming.

Adolfo, realizing this, simply smiled, "Well, I suppose we'll have to see then, won't we?" As he moved to kiss Moka again.

He was cut short, however, when he saw Tsukune's fist rocketing at him from the corner of his eye.

He moved to catch the fist, but was surprised when Tsukune suddenly disappeared from right in front of him.

_Nice speed, _He thought, before feeling Tsukune's foot slam into the back of his head, causing him to fly forwards until he managed to twist around, plant his feet on the ground, and slide to a stop.

Blinking her eyes to make sure she had seen what she thought she had, she turned and gasped when she saw Tsukune standing a bit behind her.

"Tsukune - !" She started, but was cut off when he held up a hand.

"Please, Moka-san, step aside to where it's safer," He said, looking at her, then he smiled, "I'd hate to see you get hurt because of this."

"O-okay…" She said, backing away a few steps, never taking her eyes off of him.

_He's so much _faster_ than he used to be as well, _she thought in wonder.

"I'll admit, Tsukune-kun," Adolfo said, regaining his posture, "That was a nice move, but if you think that you can win this with just attacks like _that, _then you're more stupid than I had given you credit for."

"Congradulations on managing to make an insult sound like a compliment," Tsukune said, jumping out of the way of a kick Adolfo had thrown at him from a running start, "But if _you _think that _you _will be able to win this with how _you're _fighting, then _you _must not be as smart as you think."

"Hah!" Adolfo scoffed, dodging Tsukune's punches and returning them with dodges and parried attempts of his own, "I will rip you limb from limb!"

"_Let's see it then!" _Tsukune yelled, delivering a punch to Adolfo's jaw that would've easily knocked out, or killed, a monster that was weaker, but only phased Adolfo a bit, and was replied to with Adolfo jumping into the air and delivering a rock-shattering kick, which was caught by Tsukune, the impact's pressure on the ground causing somewhat of a crater to form.

Tsukune was preparing to throw Adolfo into a wall, but, before he could Adolfo swung his free leg to punt Tsukune under the chin, both causing Tsukune's grip to weaken, and causing his sight to flash red for a moment.

Not about to lose the opportunity, Adolfo followed up with a swift, powerful roundhouse, perfectly placed into Tsukune's temple, and causing his vision to swim.

Continuing the assault further as Moka watched in horror at the sight before her, Adolfo grasped one of Tsukune's wrists to prevent him from being launched away from the impact, and began raining rapid punches and kicks to Tsukune's torso and head as quickly as possible, at points causing Tsukune to cough blood, and, with a final kick to Tsukune's stomach, sent him flying backwards to collide with a wall, where he fell to the ground, more conscious than Adolfo or Moka thought, but bleeding from a busted lip and eyebrows, coping with a broken nose, and quite possibly a couple of broken ribs.

"Tsukune… no…" Moka whispered, tears brimming up in her eyes, and she started to take a step towards him when she heard a choked cough from his direction, and, shortly after, his face turning to look at her.

It was heartbreaking, seeing him in such pain like he was in, but she didn't want to go to him for fear of Adolfo wanting to worsen his pain afterwards, so she just looked at him, with her hand over her mouth, and tears beginning to roll down her cheeks.

As Tsukune looked into her eyes, glistening with tears, and tears streaming down her cheeks, his primitive anger subsided, it was soon followed by a deep sadness at the pain she was feeling; he cared nothing for his own pain when he could tell just by a single, short glance into hers that she couldn't bear seeing what she was seeing, and, mustering a bit of strength, he smiled softly at her and closed his eyes.

"Really, now?" Adolfo said arrogantly, walking over to Tsukune and nudging him with his foot, "What was that you were saying, about how I can't beat you with how I'm currently fighting? What say you now, lying on the ground bleeding like the pathetic excuse for a life form you are? You don't deserve to even _breathe!_" He said, kicking Tsukune in the side and rolling him over, earning a pained groan from him, "Tell me before I kill you, what say you now!? Answer me, damn you!" He screamed at Tsukune, stomping furiously on his torso.

Moka was feeling sick at what was taking place, and she would have stepped in and stopped Adolfo, any punishment from her father be damned, had Tsukune not done something none of them expected.

Tsukune closed his eyes, trying to block out as much of the pain as possible, and he remembered the look on Moka's face just moments earlier, the pain that he saw in those eyes, the sadness he could tell ripped through her, and the anger came back.

Except now, it wasn't the same, primitive anger as before.

This was a cold, calculating, concentrated anger that burned even hotter than the anger before it.

Allowing the anger to spread through his body, his one, single thought, no matter how out of character this all was for him, he was going to make damn sure that that bastard paid.

"I… say…" Tsukune said between stomps, and finally, reaching up and catching Adolfo's foot mid-stomp, he looked up into the other man's eyes, "I say I'm going to make you pay for what you're making Moka-san feel!" He said, standing slowly with Adolfo's foot still in hand, and smiling at the shocked, look on his opponent's face, and what looked to be like tinges of fear in his eyes.

"H-How are you standing!?" Adolfo demanded, "What the _hell are you!?_"

"I'm Tsukune Aono," Tsukune replied, "A vampire who was once a human, headmaster of Yokai Academy, turned ghoul twice, and almost a third time, the blood of Moka Akashiya-san, Shinso blood, flows through my veins as well as hers , and, most importantly to me, I am her friend." He said calmly, squeezing Adolfo's foot until he was sure a vast majority of the bones in it had been broken, and jerking him closer by his foot and slamming his fist into his nose, feeling Adolfo's nose crack violently, and following up with another punch to his jaw, shattering it, then, letting go of his foot, kicked him in the knee of his good leg, breaking it, and, finally, jumping into the air and gripping Adolfo's head, slamming his knee into the center of his forehead, feeling his skull fracture a bit in places and hearing a sick _crack_, and landing back in front of Adolfo and picking him up single-handedly with a hand over his face.

Moka was astounded, which, in truth, was a complete understatement at what she had just seen Tsukune do; she had seen him angry before, but she had apparently never seen him _angry, _the last time she had seen such brutality in his was when he had turned into a ghoul for the first time.

Though, she did have to admit, she found a happy feeling at being reminded, yet again, how hard Tsukune was willing to fight for her sake.

Tsukune prepared to slam Adolfo's head into the ground, but was stopped by a booming voice from the gateway entrance to the castle yard.

"_**Stop!" **_Sounded the voice. Moka and Tsukune turned and looked to the source of the voice.

There, just outside the perimeter of the castle walls, stood Issa Shuzen.

"F-father!" Moka shouted in surprise, a bit louder than she had expected, and Tsukune raised his free hand in a wave and bowed as much as he could after lowing Adolfo to the ground.

Issa looked around at the scene before him and sighed heavily, "I'm gone for one week, and this is what happens."

Moka hung her head in guilt for a few seconds before raising it and gulping nervously, "I-I'm sorry, father," She apologized solemnly, "It's just Tsukune came to visit and – " she was cut off.

"Tsukune?" Issa asked, looking Tsukune up and down, "As in Tsukune Aono-kun who I trained a few years ago?"

"Yeah, that's me." Tsukune said, and was about to say something else, but suddenly, feeling the pain shoot through him from Adolfo's assault now that his adrenaline had left him, he gasped sharply and his knees buckled underneath him."

Issa sighed again and shook his head before walking over and helping Tsukune to stand again, and motioned for Moka to come over to him.

"Moka," He said, "Take him to your room, I'll have medical aid to him as soon as possible, and I'll also have someone come to fetch Adolfo and bring him to our medical ward."

"Yes, father," Moka said, sidling up to Tsukune with his arm around her shoulders, and heading off to her room as quickly as she could with him without causing him any extra discomfort.

Issa looked down at the all but dead vampire at his feet and scoffed.

"I always knew you were never good enough for my daughter." He said.

_But, you have helped Tsukune-kun's case improve, _he thought as he walked into the castle to call on some of his staff to see to Adolfo.

But he never got to see that there were also two of his _top _guard members outside as well, rendered unconscious by Tsukune.

- / -

Moka's mind was running a eight miles a minute, trying to figure out exactly what she had just seen, even though she understood it well enough, but she couldn't understand _how _Tsukune's ability had jumped so much in such a short time, considering that Adolfo had trained with her father as well as Tsukune.

Then, she flicked back to how brutal the last few strikes he landed on Adolfo had been, and she was plainly amazed by how Tsukune was much less merciful and less hesitant to deliver those strikes than she _knew _he had been last time she saw him fight, and she couldn't help but wonder if anything else had changed about him.

Stepping up the last stair to the hallway leading to her room, servants moved out of the way quickly at the sight coming down the hallway.

After what felt like an eternity to her, and about three for Tsukune, she finally came to her door, which was hurriedly opened by one of the servants, and she stepped in and laid Tsukune on her bed as gently as possible before turning on the light and closing and locking the door.

She walked over to the edge of her bed, pulled up a chair, and sat next to him, holding one of his hands carefully, as if he would break if she weren't extremely careful.

She watched him breathing slowly, and a bit raggedly, for all she knew he might have a broken rib and a punctured lung.

"Tsukune…" She whispered softly.

Taking a deep breath and turning his head to face her a bit, he smiled as well as he could, "Moka-san…" He replied, then closed his eyes and shortly followed up with, "Your fiancé seems… nice…. But I'm afraid I might've broke him."

She cast her eyes down to avert eye contact, even though his eyes were closed.

"It's… not like that," She said, guilt lathering her voice, "I don't love him."

"Then why did you do nothing when he touched you?" Tsukune asked.

"Because… I…" She started, then sighed and nuzzled her cheek against the palm of his hand, "I couldn't. My father made an agreement with his family that I would marry him in turn for their alliance and sharing their wealth. Combine the Shuzen clan's power and wealth with the Shaizonoka clan's and you have a major superpower…"

She took notice of Tsukune's quietness, and, when she looked at him, his eyes had irritation in them.

"You're telling me that your father traded you away like that?" He demanded.

"N-no, not exactly," She answered, and, upon the surprised and somewhat disappointed look on his face, her guilt increased, "I talked it over with my father… and we decided that it was highly likely that you would come back, and neither me nor him, even though he won't admit it, wanted to believe otherwise… So, three years after we graduated from Yokai, we agreed that we would give it a ten year engagement period, and, after that ten years, we would either call off the marriage, or we would go through with it, depending on the situation the Shuzen family was in, but during the engagement period, I had to let Adolfo do as he pleased around here or else everything would go to hell."

"Y-you mean…?" Tsukune said, feeling himself about to break in a non-literal sense, and, unfortunately, unable to hide the disgust from his eyes and a slight scowl on his face.

"N-no! Not that far!" Moka said, shaking her head vigorously, "Most anything other than sex… Kissing and him wanting to touch me in the way you saw earlier though, I had to endure. It was disgusting, I wanted so badly to kick him through a wall every time he came near me, but I couldn't, and I just hoped and hoped that you would come back soon…"

"Oh." Tsukune said, somewhat relieved that she hadn't been forced to give away all of her innocence.

"Father wouldn't allow him, or anyone, really, to come into _that _kind of contact with me without his approval, as well as being legitimately bonded together." She said, laying her head down on his shoulder as gently as he could, not caring that he had blood and dirt covering most of his clothes.

"I've missed you so, so much, Moka-san." Tsukune said, draping his arm over her shoulders as well as he could.

"I've missed you too, Tsukune," She replied, nuzzling her head against his shoulder a bit, "I'm so glad to see you again."

"I'm glad to see you too, Moka-san." He replied, playing with her hair a bit.

The two laid in silence for a bit, enjoying the feeling of being close and reunited again, until a few moments later, a knock came at the door.

"Lady Akashiya?" Came the voice of a girl, "Lord Shuzen ordered us to bring this to you." She continued, before stepping into the room after Moka went and unlocked the door and opened it for her.

"Thank you," Moka said, taking a tray from the girl that looked from Tsukune's position to have two wine glasses and a bit of food on it, "You can go now, I'll return it when we're done." Moka said, smiling and closing the door gently after the girl left.

Walking over and setting the tray down on the bedside table, she sat down and looked at Tsukune, who had managed to roll onto his side, holding himself up on an elbow with an eyebrow cocked a bit in a bit of amusement.

"Oohh, fancy," He said, making Moka smile and laugh a little, "I see you're taking me out to dinner and a movie first, very classy. I feel so swept away."

"Well, you know, I try," Moka said, smiling and feeling happy for the first time in a long time, "I don't want you to think the wrong thing of me, right? Plus, you deserve to be swept off your feet, ne?" She said, flicking his forehead playfully.

"Ah, yes," He said, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, with Moka's help, "And your carrying me through the castle and up the stairs has made me feel swept away alright. Though normally, I think the pretty princess is supposed to be the female."

Laughing openly now, she reached over and picked up the wine glasses and bottle, which turned out being a bottle of blood, and filled the glasses.

Handing one of the glasses to Tsukune, she took a sip from hers and smiled a bit, "And normally it's the knight in shining armor who fights off the villain, but apparently, today it was the pretty boy princess fighting off the villain to give the girly girl knight a break, or so it seems."

"Yeahh," Tsukune said, cocking his head to the side and taking a slow, long drink from his glass and enjoying the feeling on his parched throat, "What's wrong with the picture here?"

"Well," Moka said, "First off, the roles seem to be reversed here," She sat down her glass and took Tsukune's and sat it down as well before turning to him again and blushing a bit, then smiled sweetly as she said, "And I think that normally the brave knight gets a kiss, or did they change that?"

"Hmm…" Tsukune said, leaning his head back in mock deep thought, "I don't think they have," He continued leaning his head back down to look in her eyes, "So I suppose this is that scene, eh?" He finished, smiling.

"That it is." She replied, blushing more and leaning forward a bit and closing her eyes.

Sighing in joking disappointment, he said "Well, I suppose it can't be helped." Which earned a soft giggle from Moka, and as he leaned closer to her, ignoring the pain in his side and ribs from the motion, he raised a hand to gently cup her chin in his thumb and index finger and felt his pulse rate jump, as did Moka, as his lips finally closed in softly over hers.

The two sat kissing in silence for a moment, both of their minds still trying to figure out exactly how to describe what they were feeling.

Moka was currently on cloud nine, which Tsukune could relate to; she had waited so long to kiss him again, at a time when their lives weren't in danger and they weren't sad, though. As far as she was concerned, this was the second _real _kiss she had ever had; whenever Adolfo had kissed her, it was forceful and uncaring as to her thoughts on it, but with Tsukune, it was someone who she actually cared for and she knew cared for her, and his kiss was soft and loving, patient, showing his passion and love for her, but not overflowing with passion to the point where it was more lustful than anything. It was easily the most wonderful thing she had ever experienced in her life.

Tsukune felt very much the same way, except this, in a way, was technically his third kiss, considering his first was claimed by Kurumu when she saved him from his second descent into a ghoul.

But that didn't change the fact that he was enjoying every second of it, and it was amazing to him, just the feeling of how soft her lips were against his, and how much he loved her and how long he had waited for a kiss with her that wasn't in an extremely dire situation, he didn't even bother trying to further describe the feeling to himself, he just let the happiness wash over him.

The feeling for them both increased when Moka got a bit bold, as well as an urge to be closer to him, and went to straddle his lap as well as she could without causing discomfort, and she softly flicked her tongue against his lips.

A bit surprised by her actions, but not about to object, Tsukune laid his hands on her sides and gently pulled her a little closer against him and nipped at her bottom lip affectionately before pressing his forehead to hers and looking into her eyes.

Looking back into his, she smiled and kissed him again softly and rubbed her nose against his gently, wrapping her arms carefully around his neck.

"Moka-san – " Tsukune started, but she placed a finger over his lips and smiled.

"Moka," She said, and, at the confusion on his face, elaborated, "Just Moka now, please, no more honorifics?"

Tsukune studied her face for a bit before smiling a little, "I suppose I could try," He said, "M-..Moka." He tested, whispering it under his breath, convinced he sounded like an idiot, but he wanted to try and get used to saying her name without honorifics.

Smiling more and closing her eyes, Moka raised her head to rest her chin on the top of Tsukune's head and blushed a bit as she felt his face nuzzle against her neck.

"I'm so glad to see you again." She whispered softly, running her fingers through his hair.

"I'm glad to see you too… Moka." He replied, kissing her neck softly and enjoying the scent of her hair and her skin.

As all good scenes must come to an end, so did this one, as a sound came from Tsukune's stomach and Moka removed her head from its perch on top of his and looked in his eyes, amused at the embarrassment on his face.

"It's okay, Tsukune," She giggled, "You've had a long day; of course you're hungry. I'll feed you, okay?" She said smiling, and felt a warm joy when Tsukune nodded his agreement.

As she carefully pulled her bedside table a little closer to them, Tsukune finally took notice of the food on the tray.

It wasn't a great quantity, but it was still amazing; it consisted of a small assortment of rice balls, bite-sized bits of steaks, obviously cut carefully to be perfect cubes and organized into a small pyramid of cubs on the plate, each glistening with moister, as well as a small cup of noodles on the side. Despite not being a large amount of food, it was still very eye-pleasing and looked as if it had been cooked with a high level of care and skill.

"You know," Tsukune said, "When I just saw the amount of food, I almost expected leftovers or something."

Moka laughed, "No, no, any food left over that hasn't been touched we distribute to the rest of the servants; normally that's more than enough to well feed them, any leftovers that have been touched, we set out for straying animals passing by. But as for what me and my father eat ourselves, or what visitors for me or my father would eat, the cooks never use leftovers for that unless asked to. They most likely just made something nice for us in a hurry."

"I see," Tsukune said, "Well it looks amazing."

As he was reaching out for a pair of chopsticks on the tray, Moka gently smacked his hand away and pouted a bit.

"I said _I _was going to feed you!" She said, her cheeks dusted a bit with a light shade of pink.

Raising his hands in defeat, Tsukune chuckled, "Alright, alright, go ahead."

"I shall," Moka said, reaching out and picking up a pair of chopsticks and lifting a piece of the steak up to his lips with a hand under it in case it fell from the chopsticks.

Smiling and opening his mouth for her, she placed the cube of meat in his house. In a word, it tasted amazing.

It wasn't tough or dry like most steaks were that he ate from any restaurant, or even at his own home; this made all of those taste as if they had simply been thrown into a fire and forgotten about. This was a tender meat that was moist, brimming with flavor and various spices and seasonings, he almost found it difficult to believe that the castle's cooks had prepared something in such a short amount of time that would most likely take a while of careful tending with such an amazing taste; in short, he couldn't wait to see what the rest of the food tasted like.

"How is it?" Moka asked, noticing how his eyes had widened a bit for a moment when he tasted it.

"It's amazing," He said, then, chuckling, "If all I have to do is get beaten to a pulp then make a comeback to get something that tastes _this _good, I should let you kick me more often!"

"Well, just remind me next time you're hungry, then," She said, and the face he made was priceless: a mix of a trace of fear as well as amused shock, "I'm kidding, I'm kidding." She said, smiling and trying not to laugh.

"Right," He said, leaning forward a little, until the pain in his ribs acted up more, and putting his hands on her knees, "What's next?"

"Well, I suppose we should try the noodles next." She answered, blushing.

So the two sat in silence, feeding each other and occasionally sharing small, quick kisses, until the tray was empty as well as the bottle that came with it.

"Well," Tsukune said as Moka moved to sit next to him, "That was nice."

"Mhm," Moka agreed, hugging one of his arms, "How are you feeling?"

"Better," He said, turning and kissing her forehead, "Ribs are still a bit sore, and it feels like my face is healed up, but I'm sure that my face is so dirty you can't tell."

"Well," Moka said in thought, "If you want… you could drink a bit of my blood and it would help your ribs heal sooner."

"A-are you sure?" He asked, not wanting to impose more than he was sure he already was.

"Yes, Tsukune," She said, smiling warmly, "I'm sure."

"O-okay, Moka-sa – " He started, then caught himself, "… Moka… Thank you, Moka."

"You're welcome," She said, moving her hair behind her shoulder to expose her neck, 'Drink all that you want."

Nodding and leaning in towards her neck, he gently scraped his fangs against her neck, then plunged his fangs into her neck carefully, but quickly, and allowed her life liquid to pour into his mouth and down his throat.

It was absolutely amazing; that was the only thought running through his mind at that moment. It easily put the food that he had just shared with her to shame, as if it were dog food; in her blood, it was as if he could literally _taste _all of the kindness, warmth, and sweetness in her personality. It wasn't overly sweet, however, it was just sweet enough to make him feel almost instantly addicted to it; as if he were a small child in a candy shop.

After a bit of drinking, he felt a feeling in his ribs of the extra blood taking affect in accelerating the healing process; a warmth in his ribs from the blood rushing to that area, as well as a dull ache, moments of numbness, and itching from the skin, nerve, and bone cells realigning and merging back together, and, shortly after, the pain in his ribs was entirely gone.

Pulling away from her neck a bit, he proceeded to gently lick the excess traces of blood from her neck as the bite marks healed over, and noticed her shiver slightly at the feeling, then he kissed her neck a few times after it had healed and raised his head to look in her eyes.

"Better?" She asked, putting a hand on his cheek.

"Much," He replied, smiling and kissing her, "Thank you, Moka."

"You're welcome." She said, blushing and smiling, enjoying the sound of his saying her name without the honorifics.

Laying back on her bed and closing his eyes, Tsukune couldn't be happier than he was at that moment; if things kept going this way, then the years of not seeing her and the fight from earlier were more than made up for, for him personally, anyways.

She smiled and looked down at him before lying next to him and cuddling into his side with her head on his chest, an arm across his abdomen, and a leg draped over one of his.

_This is great,_ was what the both of them were thinking.

"Are you tired?" Moka asked, looking up at him.

Looking back down at her and putting a hand over hers, he replied, "If I'm honest, yeah, I feel like I could just fall asleep right now, and fall asleep happily for the first time in years, but at the same time, I want to stay awake and talk to you."

"If you're tired then you should sleep, Tsukune," She said, frowning a bit, "You've had a long day."

He was going to object, but she cut him off.

"By the way, didn't you bring a suitcase or something with you?"

"Y-yeah, I did," He replied, "I guess I must've left it outside." Then he remembered the flowers he had been intending to give to her; probably either demolished now or taken by someone else or some straying animal, _Damn it, _he thought, disappointedly.

"One second, I'll have one of the castle staff run and get it," She said, getting up and walking to the door and stepping outside.

Shortly after, he heard her calling for someone's attention, then the quieter talking of her asking them to kindly get his suitcase for him and bring it to her room.

Stepping back in and smiling, she said, "It'll be up in just a moment," Then she noticed his somewhat self-disappointed expression, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's nothing." He answered.

Walking over and sitting next to where he laid, she looked at him sternly, "Tell me, Tsukune," She said, "I know when something's wrong, and I know that face."

He looked up at her for a time, then finally sighed in defeat, "Well, on the way here, I gathered a little bouquet of roses that I found along the way that I was going to give to you, but something happened to them during the brawling earlier, I guess, and now I don't know where they are."

"Aww," She said, smiling and holding his hand, "That's sweet, don't worry about it though, okay? It's the thought that counts, right?"

Frowning, still disappointed in himself, he refrained from sighing again, "I suppose."

She looked at him and frowned herself, then leaned down and kissed him on the cheek softly.

"Tsukune, it's okay, just try to go to sleep now, okay? We can talk tomorrow, and you can clean and everything tomorrow as well."

Seeing that protesting was pointless, he nodded and pulled her down onto him and held her close, "Okay, Moka."

She smiled and kissed him one more time before cuddling into him and closing her eyes, "Sleep well, Tsukune."

"You too, Moka." He said, stroking his fingertips up and down her spine gently.

"Tsukune?" She asked, and when he heard a "Hmm?" from him, she inhaled slowly and said, "I still love you. I always have and I always will."

There was a moment of silence, and she began getting worried, until she heard him say, "I love you too, Moka, always have, and I'm never going to stop."

Smiling and nuzzling the top of her head into his neck gently, she felt her eyes water up a bit at hearing him say that, but she didn't let herself actually cry.

So, for the rest of the evening, or at least until they both fell asleep, they spent their time in silent joy at the end results of the day for them, and they fell asleep tangled up in each other's arms.

- / -

Well, there's chapter six, took me roughly a week to type up and all like I had expected.

Anyhow, I hope you all enjoyed it, not really a lot to say about this chapter. Reviews are welcome!

I'll have chapter seven out as soon as possible, chances are I'll already by typing it up by the time I get a chance to upload this anyhow.


	7. Chapter 7

_New Beginnings_

_Chapter 7: Roadway to Trust_

_Hey guys; here comes chapter seven, hope you all like it; as usual, I don't own any of R+V, nor do I profit from it or this fanfiction, and please don't copy my stuff._

- / -

Moka jerked awake, having been woken from her sleep.

Looking to her left, she saw the reason for her being woken up.

Tsukune lie there next to her, his face grief-stricken, shaking and rocking back and forth on his side as if he were trying to wake himself up.

"Tsukune!" She said, and began to shake his shoulder gently, and shaking harder and harder as he wouldn't wake up, "Tsukune! Tsukune!" She called to him again, louder this time, full of worry, "Please wake up! Tsukune!"

She sighed as he still wouldn't wake up, and held him close to her to try and somehow ease his sleep by her being close to him, and it worked, at least a little. Shortly after, however, instead of going into a gentle sleep, she heard him whimper and a moment later, his body jerked in her arms, and he involuntarily pulled away from her, and accidentally pushed her away from him in the process, now sitting on her bed wide-eyed and panting.

"Tsukune…" She whispered softly, looking up at him sadly, then, standing on her knees in front of him, she placed a hand on his cheek gently, "What happened?"

He looked down at her mattress for a bit, moving his mouth but not talking, before finally looking up into her eyes and hugging her and laying her down in the bed, which turned out being closer to an accidental tackle than anything, and pressing his face to the side of her neck.

"Damned… dreams…" He said between taking breaths, "For the last eight years, ever since the fight with Alucard, I've been dreaming almost every time I go to sleep of when your rosary had been broken."

Frowning and wrapping her arms around his neck and rubbing her cheek against the top of his head gently, she said, "Tsukune, it's okay. I promise. Had that not happened, you would still be having to worry about both Moka's individually… now, you kinda have us both in one… didn't you say before that you hoped we could come together one day?"

Finally able to breathe smoothly, he held her close against him, "Yes," He admitted, "But I didn't mean like that."

"Tsukune, look at me." She said softly, but firmly, and after he looked at her, she continued, "It's alright, I promise. Please, don't worry about it anymore, because you don't need to."

He opened his mouth to reply, but her lips had covered his before he could.

"Shhhh," She whispered against his lips quietly, "It's okay."

Closing his eyes and letting his forehead rest on her chest, he sighed, then looked up at her and nodded.

"Good," She said, smiling reassuringly and sat up and against the headboard of the bed with him and gently pulled his face closer into her chest, and felt his face get warmer against her, "Now get some sleep, Tsukune." She cooed, kissing his forehead and running her fingers through his hair.

They sat together in almost complete silence, the only sound being his easy breathing and Moka humming softly and soothingly into his ear, until he fell asleep and she could feel the rhythmic rising and falling of his shoulders from his breathing.

"Sleep well, Tsukune." She whispered, smiling and carefully laying him down next to her before getting off of the bed and quietly walking out of the room, closing the door and locking it behind her carefully.

"Now, let's see what happened to that girl bringing his stuff in." She said, frowning that she couldn't find his luggage anywhere.

She started down the hallway to search for his belongings, until she came across her father walking down a hallway intersecting with the one she was walking down.

"Father!" She called, running to him.

"Ah, Moka." He said, turning and holding his arms open.

They hugged for a moment before she stepped away.

"How is Tsukune-kun doing?" He asked, standing with his hands in his pockets.

"He's doing a lot better now," She replied cheerfully, "I'm sure he still has some aches and pains, but aside from that he's a lot better. He's asleep right now, actually."

"I see," Issa replied, "That's good to hear; however, I can't say the same for Adolfo. He's in critical condition right now, and the doctors are looking into whether he will have long-term brain damage or not; they're convinced at the moment that, despite being a vampire, he may be a bit crippled for a majority of the remainder of his lifetime."

"I see," Moka said, frowning a bit, agitated that she couldn't help but almost feel bad for Adolfo, "But, he brought it on himself, right?"

"Yes, he did," Her father agreed, nodding, "He made the mistake of going into battle with an unfamiliar vampire arrogantly, and, even more grave of an offense, he offended you and your honor in front of that vampire. Tsukune-kun did well to, as you used to say, teach him his place."

"Yeah, I know," Moka replied, "I really shouldn't worry about it."

"It isn't worth your time," Issa said, patting her head, "Adolfo is a fool, as is a large majority of his family. The only bad thing that can come of this is that Tsukune-kun has probably earned his family as an enemy, which isn't much to worry about in my opinon; what happened to Adolfo is simply karma."

Moka smiled, then a thought occurred to her.

"Father?" She asked, and when he raised an eyebrow curiously, she continued, "What is your opinion on Tsukune now?"

He looked into her eyes for a moment, with his own narrowed, then sighed.

"He's certainly better than Adolfo, I'll give him that," Issa said calmly, "But, considering how he went all this time without having anything to do with you, he needs to prove to me that he won't do as he did again."

Moka cast her gaze down at the floor, obviously saddened by what her father had said.

Frowning and, in an attempt to make her feel better, he continued, "I am glad that he fought for you and your dignity today, however."

"If he can earn your trust, what would you think of him as a potential life partner for me?" Moka asked, looking up at her father nervously.

He stood in silence, causing her to grow more nervous by the second, to the point of being fearful of what he would say, then he replied, "I think that if he can do that, then one day he will make a fine partner for you. Besides, you're a grown woman now, and you can make your own decisions. If he truly makes you happier than anything else, I would consider allowing it, but I still believe that him having my trust would be a nice bonus."

"I suppose you're right about the trust thing," She said, happy that he had a chance for her father's approval, "But I just know he's going to find out a way to earn it, and he makes me _so _incredibly happy."

"I can tell," Issa replied, chuckling, "Once I saw you coming down this hallway after me I could tell you were much happier than you had ever been near Adolfo."

"Adolfo makes me sick." She said bluntly, a disgusted look on her face.

"He makes everyone sick, Moka," He agreed, "Anyhow, I'm sorry but I need to get some things organized and written up about cancelling your engagement with him."

"Okay, father," She said, hugging him and kissing his cheek, "I just realized something." She added, stepping away from her father a step and looking up at him, grinning.

"And what might that be?" He said, turning and walking away as he waited on her reply.

"I don't know why I didn't think about it before, but I think you already trust Tsukune a good bit."

He stopped and smirked a bit, but didn't turn around, "And what makes you say that?"

"If you didn't, would you have really given me the option of breaking the engagement if he came back? Or even have entered the deal at all? I know it had to make you feel sick, making a deal like that, making yourself appear in need of help."

He turned to face her and stood quietly for a moment, "That's for me to know," He said, his smirk growing, "Anyhow, go on back to bed, I saw a servant with a suitcase I'm assuming was his heading to the guest rooms, but I told her to send them to your room, so they should be there soon enough."

"Okay, thank you," Moka answered, "I had asked her to get the suitcase, but I suppose she may have misunderstood. Anyhow, good night!" She said, turning and walking back towards her room.

Turning and walking on to his own room, Issa shook his head in amusement, "Am I really becoming _that _easy to read?"

- / -

As she turned down the hallway leading to her room, she saw a girl setting down a suitcase outside her room and raising her hand to knock on the door.

"No, don't!" Moka called, just loud enough for her to hear, and accidentally causing her to jump, "I'm sorry," Moka said quietly, walking up to her, "I didn't mean to startle you, it's just our guest is sleeping in there at the moment and he really needs his rest."

"I-It's okay, miss," She said, turning and bowing, "Here's the luggage you asked me to get, I'm sorry it took so long, I accidentally started towards the guest rooms."

"It's okay," Moka said, smiling, "Well, thank you for bringing his suitcase, you can go on about your business now, good night."

"Yes, good night, miss." She said, bowing again and walking away down the hallway.

Moka picked up his suitcase and opened her door as quietly as she could and stepped in, closing and locking the door behind her gently, and turned to see Tsukune still sleeping soundly.

She smiled and set his luggage next to her dresser, then walked over and kissed him on the cheek softly before stepping into her bathroom to take a shower while he was still asleep.

- / -

Groaning and rubbing his eyes, Tsukune sat up on the bed.

"Moka?" He called groggily, sitting with his face in his hands, and when he heard no reply, he looked around to see that she wasn't in the room.

"I guess she had stuff to do," He said, standing and just fully noticing how dirty he was as he glimpsed himself in the mirror across the room, "Geez, I should really take a shower." He said, yawning.

Then he noticed the sound of running water and walked to a side-door in Moka's room and knocked on it cautiously to make sure no one was in there; when he heard no response after a moment, he brushed it off as probably coming from a nearby room of one of the servants or something and stepped in.

He was greeted by something slamming into him, followed by a squeak of surprise, and shortly after he found himself on the ground on top of Moka, the towel she had apparently been wrapping around herself spread out underneath her instead, showing her body.

"Tsukune! What are you doing!?" She cried, sitting up hurriedly and, in the process, accidentally causing his face to become planted against her chest; shortly after which, he was crawling backwards as quickly as he could with a hand over his eyes.

"I-I'm sorry Moka!" He said, "I knocked on the door and you didn't answer, so I thought no one was in here!"

All the while he was chanting to himself mentally, _Don't look it's a sin, don't look it's a sin, don't look it's a sin!_

"I-It's… Okay, Tsukune," She said, sitting up and starting to wrap the towel around her to cover herself, "I was coming to the door just as you came in; I'm sorry, I should've just called out to you instead."

"I-It's okay." He answered, carefully uncovering one of his eyes then turning a deep red as he couldn't help but notice that, in the position she was sitting, once certain part _wasn't _very well covered by the towel.

_Damn it, I'm going to hell._

Moka looked at him curiously for a moment, trying to understand why he was blushing so badly, then, looking down, she saw why and lit up herself, standing quickly and wrapping the towel around her to better cover herself and standing with her legs close together.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!" He said, pressing his forehead to the floor, "Please don't kill me!"

She looked down at him for a moment, her eyes watering in embarrassment, before walking over and sitting next to him on her knees.

"I-it's okay, Tsukune," She said, stroking her fingertip across his shoulders; she worked her nerves up for a moment, then continued, "I'm… I'm sure you would've… seen one day anyhow."

Tsukune's heart had been racing, his breathing quickened, and his mind ran about fifteen miles a minute in worry, but it seemed to him as if all of it just stopped at once and he simply stayed on the floor where he was, but stared at it, trying to process what he had just heard.

"Uhm… Tsukune?" She asked, nudging him a little and hoping that her attempt to make him feel better hadn't turned out in a less desirable way.

_Though I don't _guess _I would mind if it turned into… _She thought, then shook her head vigorously and blushed madly at the thought.

"S-sorry, Moka," He said, sitting up and closing his eyes, "I-I'll let you finish, let me know when you're done?"

He stood up and began to turn to make his way out of the bathroom, but was stopped by Moka grabbing his hand.

"T-Tsukune," She said, her voice trembling slightly, "It's fine… There's no point in leaving now when you've already seen."

"W-W-What?" He sputtered, turning to face her and cautiously opening his eyes.

"I'm done washing myself," She said, "b-but… I want to wash you – your back, I mean."

"B-But – " He started, but she looked up at him, almost pleadingly, so he sighed, "Okay, Moka, if you're sure that's what you want."

"It is." She squeaked nervously, taking off his shirt and flushing even more when she pointed torwards his pants and he obediently discarded them, then, walking to the shower area of the bathroom with him, she sat him down on a small stool.

Moka reached down and picked up the sponge she had just used herself and began scrubbing the dirt and dried bloody from his neck, shoulders, and back, "Gosh, Tsukune, you're so dirty!" She said, frowning a bit.

He, however, had taken her statement in a completely different way, and felt about half of his blood flow to his face while the other half began flowing more southbound.

"I-I'm sorry about that." He said, trying to fight the blood flow into a more appropriate path.

"It's okay," She said, scrubbing his arms, then walking in front of him to wash his face and chest, "I'll just have to wash the sheets and blankets, is all."

Tsukune stared at her for a minute, realization dawning on him.

_Geez, what's wrong with me today?_

"Y-Yeah," He agreed, "Again, sorry about dirtying up your sheets and all."

"It's fine!" She said, smiling and watching his face, then standing and pouring a bit of her shampoo on his head, she started washing his hair, her fingertips gently scratching and massaging across his scalp, "I really don't mind; I'm just glad you're back and that you're okay."

He smiled and closed his eyes, enjoying having her wash his hair, "I appreciate all you're doing for me."

Blushing and smiling, she kissed him on the forehead and began rinsing water through his hair, "I'm happy to do it."

After she finished with his hair, he stood up and wrapped his arms around her and walked her backwards until her back was against a wall.

Smiling and wrapping her arms around his neck she kissed him and bit onto his bottom lip gently, "Tsukune, you're going to end up making me want to go further…" She whined cutely.

"W-Well," Tsukune said, feeling his face growing hotter, "Is that what you want?"

"Well," She said, looking up at him and leaning her head back against the wall, "Kind of, but I'd like if my father fully trusted you again first – I mean I do, we both know that, but my father still wants you to prove a bit more that you'll be by me the rest of my life and not leave again."

"Understandable," He admitted, "I'll get his trust some way or another."

"I know you will, Tsukune." She said, nuzzling in to him.

"We should probably head out," Tsukune said, rubbing the small of her back gently, "I was wondering if you could show me around a bit, and sometime today I'd like to meet with your father if I can."

"He's busy signing papers and stuff to make the cancelling of my engagement with Adolfo official, so I'm not sure when you could talk to him." She answered, stepping away from him and walking to a closed off section of the bathroom and tossing a towel out to him.

"I see," Tsukune sighed, catching the towel and discarding his boxers and beginning to dry himself, "How's he doing anyhow?"

"Adolfo is fine," She called, "Or as fine as he can be with a broken face, foot, and most likely a concussion and a skull fracture."

"Geez, I did that?" Tsukune asked, a bit skeptical.

"Yeah, but he deserved it though, and it made me happy to see you fighting for me," She replied, "The only thing is, you might have his family as an enemy now."

"Well, damn." Tsukune groaned, reaching outside the room for his suitcase and stepping into another pair of boxers and pants, "Just what I've always wanted."

"I wouldn't worry too much," Moka said, stepping out in her bra and panties and turning so her back faced him, "Could you hook this for me?" She asked, and continued when he stepped over to her and hooked her bra for her, "Anyhow, it isn't much to worry about because you have me and my father on your side, and I'm sure Kokoa and Akua wouldn't be against helping you, especially if my father orders it."

"I see," He said as he walked out of the bath room and put on another shirt and his belt, "I'm sure it'll still be a bit of a bother at times, though."

"There's no doubt about that," Moka agreed, following him out and donning a small, white sun dress, "They're all used to getting everything they want, but they'll be broken from that habit if they attack our family."

Tsukune nodded as they sat down on her bed, where he was putting his socks and a pair of boots on and she simply slid her feet into some heeled shoes.

"Oh, what's that?" Moka questioned, noticing a small box in the corner of his suitcase.

"It used to be yours." He answered, standing and stepping away from the bed.

She looked up at him curiously for a moment, then reached down and picked up the box and opened it to see a cracked rosary inside.

"M-My old rosary…" She said, stroking it with her fingertips gently.

"Yeah." He said, turning and sitting down in a chair facing her.

"Why do you still have it?" She asked, closing the box and looking up at him.

"If I'm honest, I just couldn't bear to let it go. So many memories of us are in that rosary." He answered, taking the box from her hands and placing it back where it was and closing and locking his suitcase.

"I guess you're right," She said, standing and taking his hand and walking to and out the door with him, "Well, how about we go to our library first for a bit? I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

"I'll go anywhere you want, Moka." He said smiling, and the two started off down the maze of hallways to the library hand in hand.

- / -

"And, with this order, the engagement of Moka Shuzen Akashiya Bloodriver and Adolfo Shaizukona is officially broken, and, also by this, there shall be an agreement of peaceful indifference between the Shuzen and Shaizukona families." Issa read to himself, confirming that the final part of the several pages of documents he had written was acceptable and accurate.

He couldn't help but smile a bit at the last part he had placed in Moka's name. For a long while now, he had been including the name "Bloodriver" in hers, so as to try and honor her and her mother as they should be.

"Such a name shouldn't go unsaid." He murmured to himself, standing and sliding the papers into a large envelope and placing a wax seal over it with the Shuzen crest of bared fangs and bat wings.

He stepped out of the door to his office and locked it, and began making his way down the halls to the mailing area to send off the paper, hardly making a sound as he walked, even with his heavy boots.

"I just hope their family's bratty tendencies don't inspire them to come against us for this," He said, scowling as he rounded a corner, "Else there'll be hell to pay."

"To whom is hell being paid?" Came a smooth voice from behind him.

As he turned around, his scowl grew as he saw the matriarch of their feministicly-dictated family.

He walked to her and handed her the envelope, "Mashiro Shaizukona," He growled, "Your family will be being paid hell if you come against me for this. And why are you here, anyhow?" He demanded.

"Well, I heard that a visitor of Miss Akashiya had assaulted my darling Adolfo," She answered, crossing her arms under her chest, "And I would like to see my son, as well as notifying the one responsible for his of how he has gotten on our bad side."

"Your son made the decision to insult Moka in front of him as well as to walk into a fight with him, an unfamiliar vampire, with arrogance. He brought it on himself, and the man who did this to him is one I know and consider a part of the Shuzen clan. An act of war against him will be an act of war against all of Shuzen." Issa said plainly.

"Oh, I see," Mashiro answered, then she looked down at the envelope in her hands, "Anyhow, I wonder what this could be about?"

She silently opened the envelope and withdrew a small stack of papers from it, and began reading over them.

They stood quietly in the hallway, the only noises their light breathing and the flipping of pages as she continued to read, until finally she came to a final section whose topic sentence mentioned the status of Moka's engagement with Adolfo.

"What ever could _this _be about, Issa-dono?" She asked, an eyebrow raised as she looked at him, and began reading aloud, " "Delving into the topic of the engagement between Adolfo Shaizukona and Moka Shuzen Akashiya Bloodriver, the matrimonial engagement between said parties has been cancelled by the Shuzen family. Due to recent events, changes of circumstance, and the simple unhappiness of Moka and the rest of the Shuzen family, we would no longer take part in this planned event. To repeat this bluntly, the engagement between Moka Shuzen Akashiya Bloodriver and Adolfo Shaizukona is officially broken, and we request indifferent peacefulness between the two said families." "

"Yes, that would be what it says." Issa said with a bit of sarcasm.

"And, just what," She began, her face flushing a bit in agitation, "Would be the changes of circumstance?"

"The most obvious one, to me," Issa replied smoothly, "Would be that we now have someone more suitable to be her life partner."

She scowled and began walking towards him, the sound of her heeled shoes _clacking _on the hard stone floor.

"_Who_, might I ask, is a better partner for her than my Adolfo!?" She demanded once she was just a mere few inches away from him.

"Someone who is more powerful, self-sacrificial, respectful, and dignified, perhaps?" Issa said in a mocking tone, "I believe your question should be who _isn't _a better partner for her than Adolfo."

"Issa Shuzen, we come from a proud family and I would appreciate it if you would refrain from insulting us." She said snappily.

"You come from a family of brats who are used to everything being fed to them with a diamond spoon," He answered, raising his voice slightly, "You and your family are all used to getting everything that you want, and if you don't to begin with, you complain until you do get it. Your family has worked for absolutely _nothing _of what you have!" He spat at her.

"_You, sir, _are a _vile, wretched _creature, who deserves not what he has, but to be struck down by a hand such as my own!"

"And you intend to strive for such a feat?" He asked, smirking, "I think that, if you think you can do such a thing, you should do it now; otherwise, you should turn tail now and run, whimpering with your tail between your legs like the sickly _dogs _I know your family to be."

She glared at him for a moment, before taking a step back.

"I do not want to make a _show _here of the great lord Issa Shuzen being struck down in the halls he calls his own. Another time, and another place, however, I shall." She said, before turning and walking away.

Issa stood in silence and watched her leave, and, as she approached a door, he called to her, his voice booming through the halls.

"Oh, how I long to see the day you can release _me _from this world, you sickening _bitch!_"

He turned and heard a door slam shut at the end of the hallway, then began making his way to the castle library, and saw a picture of his beloved Akasha on a pedestal at the side of the hallway.

He turned to it and gently stroked his fingertips down it and sighed.

"Oh, how I truly do long for release to you more and more with each day, my love."

- / -

Well, there's chapter seven! Over the next bit I intend to work on the relationship between Issa and Tsukune, etc., and then I guess I'll figure out something to do after that! Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed and I hope you continue to enjoy. I'll have chapter eight out as soon as I can; any reviews you have, please PM them to me from now on, because it would make it much easier and simpler for me to reply to the person individually and all. Thanks.


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